Value Of Smart-Planes Fetal Heart In Quantitative Analysis Of Aortic And Pulmonary Artery Diameters

Objective:To explore the feasibility of Smart-Planes Fetal Heart(S-planes FH)in the display of the fetal ventricular outflow views,and to compare diameters of fetal aorta(AO)and pulmonary artery(PA)measured by using two-dimensional echocardiography(2DE)and S-planes FHMethods:One hundred and eighty-five fetuses with gestational age of 17-36 weeks were enrolled.Each fetus had undergone conventional 2DE examination and the three-dimensional fetal cardiac volume datasets were obtained.The volume datasets were analyzed offline using new automatic software(Smart-Planes Fetal Heart,S-planes FH).The diameters of AO and PA were measured by 2DE and S-planes FH,respectively.Pearson correlation analysis was used to evaluate the correlation between the two methods for measuring the diameters of AO and PA,and paired t test was used.The consistency of the two methods was verified by Bland-Altman analysis.Results:Fetal ventricular outflow views were successfully obtained using S-planes FH in 173(93.5%)cases among all 185 fetuses whose ventricular outflow views were satisfactorily obtained by fetal 2DE.There was a good correlation between the two methods(r=0.84,P=0.04),(r=0.81,P=0.00).Bland-Altman plot showed the 95%limits of agreement was(-1.17,1.00),(-1.79,1.02).Conclusion:Using S-planes FH technique to obtain fetal ventricular outflow tract section has high success rate and good repeatability.It can also be used for quantitative analysis of fetal AO and PA,and can be used to assist in the diagnosis of fetal ventricular outflow tract lesions.