Background: As of January 31, 1995, 564 outlet strut fractures (OSFs) of Björk-Shiley convexo-concave (BSCC) heart valves had been reported to the Shiley Heart Valve Research Center, of which approximately two thirds resulted in the death of the patient. Previous studies indicate that one leg of the outlet strut separates (single-leg separation, SLS) from the valve before the second leg breaks, which results in complete OSF. To identify those valves at risk of complete OSF, an in vivo radiographic imaging technique is being developed to evaluate the strut leg integrity. The goal of the present study was to develop an objective postprocessing technique to evaluate outlet strut leg integrity quantitatively in these cineradiographic images.
Methods and results: Twenty-two sets (12 intact valves, 10 SLS valves) of cineangiographic images were obtained from individuals whose valve status was subsequently verified ex vivo. Several quantitative measures of SLS were evaluated to identify possible loss of metal or gaps in the SLS legs. Two of these measures, decrease in pixel intensity (DIPI) ratio and gap half-width, are diagnostic metrics of SLS: i.e., the maximum likelihood estimate of the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve was 0.892 (SD, 0.066) for a model based on DIPI ratio and 0.802 (SD, 0.093) for gap half-width.
Conclusions: We have developed a postprocessing technique that can be used to objectively evaluate outlet strut integrity in cineradiographic images of BSCC heart valves. At an estimated specificity of 1.0, the estimated sensitivity of the objective review was comparable to that of a subjective expert review panel.