Left ventricular ejection fraction by real-time three-dimensional echocardiography The Necker cube for the naive realism of two-dimensional methods

Abstract

Despite a staggering technical progress in echocardiography, in daily clinical practice assessment of left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction (EF) is still often done in a rather inaccurate two-dimensional (2D) manner. Real-time three-dimensional echocardiography (RT3DE) provides a more representative realistic view of LV volumes, thereby being the Necker cube for the naive realism of 2D methods. The Necker cube (Fig. [Fig1]) is an optical illusion first published by the Swiss crystallographer Louis Albert Necker in 1832 . It provides a counter-attack against naive realism, which states that t