Assessing cardiac function in the single ventricle circulation: Kinetic energy ejection fraction

Background Those with single ventricle circulations often have a normal ventricular volumetric ejection fraction (VV EF) which is not in keeping with their symptoms and prognosis. Recently four-dimensional flow (4Dflow) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used to extract parameters of intra-cardiac kinetic energy (KE). There has been recent interest in measuring ventricular KE in health and disease to see if this could provide an additional tool in the assessment of ventricular function. We propose a new simple measure of ventricular function based on kinetic energy, the kinetic energy ejection fraction (KE EF), and assess its usefulness in patients with single ventricle circulation.