Routine Chest CTA Reliably Quantifies Left Ventricular Myocardial Mass

Automated three-dimensional segmentation of left ventricular myocardial mass from routine non-ECG-gated chest CTA is reliable, with LVMM stable across cardiac phases (2.4% mean coefficient of variation).

• Why it matters: Cardiac information in thoracic CTA is underused, and a dependable method is needed to enable large-scale assessment of ventricular remodeling in thoracic aortic disease.
• What they did: In 257 patients without aortic disease and 181 with thoracic aortic aneurysm or dissection, LVMM was quantified from routine non-ECG-gated CTA and validated in a 10-patient cohort across reconstruction phases.
• The result: LVMM showed small-to-moderate agreement with echocardiographic/CMR reference values (d = 0.22–0.67), was comparable in aneurysm vs normal adults (140 ± 43 g vs 141 ± 40 g; adjusted p = 1.0), and was higher in acute and chronic dissection (199 ± 61 g and 191 ± 57 g; both adjusted p < 0.001).