Intracardiac Kinetic Energy Reference Values
Explore healthy LV and RV kinetic energy (KE) measurements derived from 4D flow cardiovascular MRI. Age-group medians and interquartile ranges are taken from published research; values are not individual diagnoses or interchangeable between processing pipelines.
What is intracardiac kinetic energy?
4D flow MRI samples three-directional blood velocity throughout the cardiac cycle. The kinetic energy of moving blood depends on its mass and the square of its velocity. Here, study-specific KE values are indexed to ventricular end-diastolic volume (KEiEDV) and expressed as μJ/ml, while E/A is a unitless ratio.
Peak E-wave KE corresponds to early diastolic filling and peak A-wave KE to late atrial-contraction filling. These are flow kinetic energy indices, not the same as conventional Doppler E/A velocity ratios. Report chamber, normalization, analysis software and MRI acquisition before comparing results.
Healthy reference
Published age-group medians by chamber and kinetic energy metric.
MEASUREMENT
VENTRICLE
Hover over a point or line to identify its reference and median. Click to dim or restore that series.
Published values
Detailed source results remain in this table, including median, Q1, Q3 and cohort size. Each row corresponds to an age band and ventricle from the original publication. Plotting positions use age-band midpoints.
| Reference | Study population / chamber | Age | KE value | n | Statistics |
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How to interpret age-associated KE changes
The underlying 163-subject healthy cohort showed a decline in peak E-wave KE and KE E/A with age, while peak A-wave KE increased. Mean-free median estimates are reported here from the paper’s Table 2; the IQR reflects variation within each age band, not 95% confidence intervals. Apparent differences between methods or disease populations must be interpreted carefully.
Future pathology tabs: This atlas supports group-specific data and can be expanded with repaired tetralogy of Fallot, pulmonary arterial hypertension, diabetes or other clinical groups only where quantitative measurements use a sufficiently comparable definition. These are not represented as reference populations here until values are verified.
For E/A velocity and flow references, see the 4D flow MRI E/A Reference Values. For aortic stiffness, use the PWV Reference Atlas.
References
- [1] Zhao X, Tan RS, Garg P, et al. Age- and sex-specific reference values of biventricular flow components and kinetic energy by 4D flow cardiovascular magnetic resonance in healthy subjects. J Cardiovasc Magn Reson. 2023;25:50. View paper ↗. Table 2, age-stratified median (Q1–Q3), n = 163, KE indexed to EDV.