Reproducibility assessment of biventricular strain derived from long-axis feature tracking in travelling volunteers - a study in the Berlin research network for cardiovascular magnetic resonance (BER-CMR)

PURPOSE: To evaluate the reproducibility of biventricular global longitudinal strain (GLS) assessment using cardiovascular magnetic resonance in a multicenter study of travelling volunteers. METHODS: Twenty travelling volunteers were prospectively scanned at four sites with same-vendor scanners at 3.0T (sites I, II, III) and 1.5T (site IV). Cine imaging in three long-axis views was performed using a segmented balanced steady-state free precession sequence with 30 cardiac phases except site II with 25 phases. RESULTS: Imaging and post-processing were carried out successfully for 18 volunteers in a core lab setting. Pairwise comparisons revealed significant differences in left ventricular (LV) GLS between sites I and II (p < 0.001) and sites II and IV (p = 0.013), as well as in right ventricular (RV) GLS between sites I and IV (p = 0.027). RV GLS values were significantly higher at 3.0T (p = 0.024), whereas field strength had no significant impact on LV GLS (p = 0.153). Conversely, the use of 25 cardiac phases at site II was associated with significantly lower LV GLS values (p < 0.001), while RV GLS remained unaffected (p = 0.825). CONCLUSION: When applying feature tracking-based strain in a multicenter study, careful consideration should be given to the temporal resolution for LV longitudinal strain and to magnetic field strength for RV longitudinal strain.