Videorecording or direct computer acquisition for videodensitometric analysis of 2-D echo images: what agreement?

In clinical and research practice, quantitative videodensitometric evaluation of 2-D echocardiographic images of left ventricular myocardium has been applied to characterize the underlying structural properties. This densitometric evaluation can be performed on videorecorded images as well as after direct digitization on computer of the video output of the echoscanner. We assessed the repeatability of extracted pictorial features obtained by two sets of videorecorded and directly computer acquired echographic images, as well as the agreement between the quantitative echocardiographic parameters obtained with the two modalities of image recording.