Heart failure & cardiomyopathiesResearch article
Reappraising cardiac function with myocardial contraction fraction: normal values, disease detection, and prognostication
- Myocardial contraction fraction (MCF) was assessed across four datasets spanning healthy controls and chronic structural cardiac disease, with direct comparison to LVEF
- All images were analysed using the same validated artificial intelligence algorithm
Authors' conclusion
We established MCF reference ranges, showing superior performance for detecting early disease and tracking progression compared with LVEF. MCF offers enhanced prognostic utility, complementing established metrics of LV function.
Study context
- Population
- Healthy controls and patients with chronic structural cardiac diseasefour datasets · healthy subjects from the UK Biobank (reference ranges) 3,541 · veteran athletes 278 · pathological hypertrophy (hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, amyloid, Fabry, severe aortic stenosis (AS), hypertension (HTN)) 633 · dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) 103 · subjects from the UK Biobank (disease severity) 41,558 · consecutive patients from an independent external dataset (prognostication) 1,277
- Comparison
- MCF with direct comparison to LVEF
Main finding
As reported in the abstract
MCF by sex
male
0.94
mean MCF
female
1.1
mean MCF
Further findings
| Outcome | MCF | LVEF |
|---|---|---|
| Prognostic ability | ||
| HR | 0.772 | 0.816 |
| χ2 | 198 | 151 |
- Prognostic ability — MCF had superior prognostic ability to LVEF
- P < 0.001
- Sex-specific MCF reference ranges: male reference range [0.68-1.20]
- Sex-specific MCF reference ranges: female reference range [0.82-1.38]
- MCF and LVEF in pathological disease: HCM mean MCF 0.72 · mean ejection fraction (EF) 76%
- MCF and LVEF in pathological disease: severe AS mean MCF 0.69 · mean EF 64%
- MCF and LVEF in pathological disease: amyloid mean MCF 0.5 · mean EF 56%
- MCF and LVEF in pathological disease: HTN mean MCF 0.9 · mean EF 65%
- MCF and EF in DCM: DCM EF 34% · MCF 0.58
MCF and LVEF in pathological disease
- MCF decreased in pathological disease but there was no significant decrease in LVEF other than in amyloid
MCF and EF in DCM
- Both MCF and ejection fraction (EF) decreased in DCM
Tracking worsening HTN
- MCF decreased with worsening HTN, whereas LVEF increased
- P < 0.05
Original publication
Reappraising cardiac function with myocardial contraction fraction: normal values, disease detection, and prognostication. Eur Heart J Cardiovasc Imaging. Published 22 January 2026. doi:10.1093/ehjci/jeag019
Summarised from the published abstract; every number is checked against it