Evaluation of the sphericity index of the fetal heart during middle and late pregnancy using fetalHQ

Abstract

Objective

To explore the feasibility of the fetal heart quantitative technique (fetalHQ) for evaluating the sphericity index (SI) of the fetal heart during middle and late pregnancy.

Methods

Ninety-six normal fetuses in middle and late gestation who underwent systemic ultrasound examination in the Department of Ultrasound of the Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital of Hunan Province in November 2020 were enrolled, and dynamic images of the four-chamber view of the fetal heart were collected. The correlation between the global sphericity index (GSI), ventricular 24-segment SI, and gestational age (GA) was analyzed, and the differences between the left and right ventricular 24-segment SI were compared.

Results

The success rate of fetalHQ analysis was 93.75%. There was no significant linear correlation between GSI and ventricular 24-segment SI and GA (all ps > .05). The differences in SI between segments 1 and 9 and 15 and 24 in the left and right ventricles were statistically significant (all ps < .05), while the differences in SI between segments 10 and 14 were not statistically significant (all ps > .05). In segments 1–9, the SI of the right ventricle was smaller than that of the left ventricle, indicating that the right ventricle was significantly more spherical than the left ventricle. In segments 15–24, the opposite was true.

Conclusion

FetalHQ is a simple and reliable method for evaluating the GSI and 24-segment SI of the left and right ventricles. It can provide some theoretical basis for the clinical quantitative evaluation of fetal heart geometry and lay a foundation for the quantitative evaluation of fetal heart function in cases of structural and functional abnormalities.

Keywords:

• Fetal heart
• fetalHQ
• sphericity index

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

The study was supported by the grants from the Major Scientific and Technological Projects for Collaborative Prevention and Control of Birth Defects in Hunan Province [No. 2019SK1010], Science and Technology Innovation Projects of Hunan Province [No. 2018SK50504], Scientific and Research Projects of the Hunan Health Commission [No. 202109020809], Scientific and Research Projects of the Hunan Health Commission [No. B20190206].