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Purpose: As an extremely rare abnormity, type IIA pulmonary artery sling (PAS) tracheobronchial anomalies should be differentiated from normal airway for therapeutic decision-making. This study aimed to investigate the quantitative characteristics of type IIA PAS tracheobronchial anomalies using dual-source computed tomography (DSCT).Materials and Methods: From January 2009 to December 2016, there were 11 type IIA PAS patients enrolled for analysis and compared with 32 controls. The areas of the trachea, right upper lobar bronchus, left main bronchus, right intermediate bronchus [bridging bronchus (BB) in patients], and subcarinal angle [subpseudocarinal angle in patients] were measured. Measurements other than that for the angle were standardized with body surface area.Results: Significant differences were found between the type IIA PAS patients and controls in terms of DSCT measurements in the trachea (0.51 ± 0.32 cm2/m2 vs. 0.92 ± 0.18 cm2/m2, P < 0.001); left main bronchus (0.29 ± 0.14 cm2/m2 vs. 0.43 ± 0.18 cm2/m2, P = 0.01); right intermediate bronchus [BB in patients] (0.36 ± 0.13 cm2/m2 vs. 0.47 ± 0.12 cm2/m2, P = 0.02); and subcarinal angle [subpseudocarinal angle in patients] (116.27 ± 16.45° vs. 79.41 ± 15.71°, P < 0.001). Receiver operating characteristic analysis further revealed that these parameters may be indicators to differentiate tracheobronchial anomalies due to type IIA PAS from controls (AUC, 0.88-0.98; sensitivity, 81.7%-100%; specificity, 91.7%-100%).Conclusions: DSCT is an alternative technique to detect tracheobronchial anomalies in pediatric patients with type IIA PAS. It can provide accurate anatomic details for surgeons to determine therapeutic strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of this study was to clarify the feasibility of myocardial strain using cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) for the evaluation of left ventricular (LV) deformation in patients with Ebstein's anomaly (EA).Materials and Methods: We recruited 32 patients with EA and 30 controls for CMR examination and measured LV function, dimension and tissue tracking parameters (the global and regional radial, circumferential and longitudinal peak strain), together with the right ventricle (RV) dimension. LV strain parameters were compared among the controls, patients with preserved LV ejection fraction (LVEF; ≥55%), and patients with reduced LVEF (<55%). Pearson's correlation was used to evaluate relationships between tissue tracking parameters with the RVEDD/LVEDD index and LVEF. An ROC analysis was also performed to determine whether the cut-off values for PS could be used to differentiate LV dysfunction between patients with EA and controls. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to assess the inter- and intra-observer variability.Results: The global strain parameters all decreased significantly in the EA group compared with the control group (all P<0.05). Furthermore, the global radial and circumferential peak strain (PS) were obviously even lower in the reduced LVEF group than the strain measured in preserved LVEF groups (28.64% vs. 37.39%, p<0.05; and -8.20% vs. -17.89%; p<0.05; respectively). The regional strain abnormalities in EA patients were mainly involved in basal and middle segments. The results also demonstrated a significant correlation between the ratio of the RV end-diastolic dimension to the LV end-diastolic dimension (RVEDD/LVEDD index) with the global circumferential PS (r=0.508) and the longitudinal PS (r=0.474), as well as a good correlation between radial PS and LVEF (r=0.465). The ICCs for intra- and inter-observer variability were 0.797-0.904 and 0.701-0.896.Conclusions: LV strain serves an earlier and more comprehensive measurement of LV dysfunction than LVEF in EA, which could potentially be included as a supplementary diagnostic procedure in the evaluation of EA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of this study was to assess the correlations of functional and dimensional parameters with the severity of tricuspid regurgitation in patients with Ebstein's anomaly (EA) by using cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging. Materials and Methods: Thirty-three patients with EA without previous cardiac surgery and 25 normal individuals were recruited and underwent both cardiac MR imaging and preoperative transthoracic echocardiography. The left ventricular (LV) functional parameters and dimensions of the right ventricle (RV) and LV were measured using 3.0-T cardiac MR imaging. Tricuspid regurgitation severity grading was estimated by echocardiography. The functional and dimensional parameters were compared between EA patients and controls using independent sample t-tests. Spearman's rank correlation was used to determine the correlations between the functional and dimensional parameters and tricuspid regurgitation. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was used to predict tricuspid regurgitation severity using individual functional and dimensional parameters. Results: Statistical analysis revealed significant differences in the functional and dimensional parameters between EA patients and controls. Within the EA group, tricuspid valve regurgitation negatively correlated well with the left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) (r=-0.558, p=0.001). The ratio of the right ventricular (functional right ventricle) end-diastolic dimension to the left ventricle end-diastolic dimension (RVEDD/LVEDD) in EA patients also correlated well with the severity of tricuspid valve regurgitation (r=0.492, p=0.004). Moreover, ROC analysis revealed that high sensitivity and specificity were obtained for predicting the severity of tricuspid valve regurgitation with LVEF (78.3%, 90.0%) and RVEDD/LVEDD (78.3%, 94.3%). Conclusion: In EA patients, the left and right ventricular functional and dimensional parameters from MRI correlated well with tricuspid regurgitation, which helped predict the severity of EA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We made an innovative attempt to apply artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in the diagnosis of congenital heart disease and associated pulmonary arterial hypertension based on a large-scale chest radiograph dataset (n = 3255). • AI achieved promising performance in diagnosing congenital heart disease and associated pulmonary arterial hypertension, outperforming radiologists. • The utilization of AI improved the performance of radiologists in diagnosing congenital heart disease and associated pulmonary arterial hypertension. To explore the possibility of automatic diagnosis of congenital heart disease (CHD) and pulmonary arterial hypertension associated with CHD (PAH-CHD) from chest radiographs using artificial intelligence (AI) technology and to evaluate whether AI assistance could improve clinical diagnostic accuracy. A total of 3255 frontal preoperative chest radiographs (1174 CHD of any type and 2081 non-CHD) were retrospectively obtained. In this study, we adopted ResNet18 pretrained with the ImageNet database to establish diagnostic models. Radiologists diagnosed CHD/PAH-CHD from 330/165 chest radiographs twice: the first time, 50% of the images were accompanied by AI-based classification; after a month, the remaining 50% were accompanied by AI-based classification. Diagnostic results were compared between the radiologists and AI models, and between radiologists with and without AI assistance. The AI model achieved an average area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.948 (sensitivity: 0.970, specificity: 0.982) for CHD diagnoses and an AUC of 0.778 (sensitivity: 0.632, specificity: 0.925) for identifying PAH-CHD. In the 330 balanced (165 CHD and 165 non-CHD) testing set, AI achieved higher AUCs than all 5 radiologists in the identification of CHD (0.670–0.858) and PAH-CHD (0.610–0.688). With AI assistance, the mean ± standard error AUC of radiologists was significantly improved for CHD (ΔAUC + 0.096, 95 % CI: 0.001–0.190; P = 0.048) and PAH-CHD (ΔAUC + 0.066, 95 % CI: 0.010–0.122; P = 0.031) diagnosis. Chest radiograph-based AI models can detect CHD and PAH-CHD automatically. AI assistance improved radiologists' diagnostic accuracy, which may facilitate a timely initial diagnosis of CHD and PAH-CHD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]