Mitral Stenosis 3D Atlas - The Mitral Valve

To identify the best therapeutic strategy in patients with rheumatic mitral valve stenosis, clinical data and accurate measurements of mitral valve area are needed. Doppler based methods are heavily influenced by cardiac rhythm, haemodynamic status and angle of incidence. Accordingly methods based on direct planimetry of the anatomical valve orifice should be more accurate. However, direct planimetry of mitral valve area from 2D echocardiographic images has several limitations: the major one being overestimation of valve orifice area due to imaging and measurement in an oblique plane. RT-3DE has overcome this limitation as we may easily identify the correct plane on the 3D acquired data set that represents the plane of the opening of the valve and by cropping the image in that particular plane, we will get the smallest opening area of the leaflets and the actual mitral valve orifice area (Figure).