Why the study?
Although age- and sex-related differences in cardiac anatomy are established using conventional CMR, their representation in three-dimensional ventricular shape remains unclear, and pooled models may obscure within-sex age-associated variation.
Do sex-specific statistical shape models provide a more interpretable representation of age-associated ventricular variation than a sex-agnostic model in asymptomatic adults?
Population
185 male and 187 female asymptomatic Swiss adults aged 18 to 85 years
Comparison
Sex-specific statistical shape models vs sex-agnostic pooled model
Design
Cross-sectional study
Key result
Sex-specific statistical shape models better organized age-associated ventricular variation than a pooled model, in which 57% of first-mode variance was attributable to between-sex differences.
Authors
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Sex-specific models may clarify age-related ventricular remodeling by removing sex confounding; hypothesis-generating for refined CMR reference standards.
Cross-Sectional (n=372)
Do sex-specific statistical shape models provide a more interpretable representation of age-associated ventricular variation than a sex-agnostic model in asymptomatic adults?
Sex-specific anatomical reference models better capture within-sex cardiac aging structure by removing confounding between-sex anatomical variations seen in pooled models.
Buoso et al. (2026) conducted a cross-sectional in Asymptomatic (n=372). Sex-specific statistical shape models vs. Sex-agnostic (pooled) statistical shape model was evaluated on Proportion of total shape variance explained by the first mode. Sex-specific statistical shape models better organized age-associated ventricular variation than a pooled model, in which 57% of first-mode variance was attributable to between-sex differences.