Transoesophageal echocardiographic transgastric, cross-sectional view of the left ventricle at midpapillary muscle level with automated border detection (ABD). Endocardial border of the left ventricle, including the papillary muscles, was circumscribed manually to define the region of interest (blue line). ABD quantifies the cardiac chamber areas instantaneously by detecting the blood-tissue interface (red line), which results in a continuous, beat-to-beat left ventricular area curve (green line). Left ventricular end-diastolic area (LVEDA) was defined as peak of the left ventricular area during diastole. Left ventricular end-systolic area (LVESA) was defined as minimum left ventricular area during systole. Stroke area (SA) was defined as LVEDA – LVESA over the same cardiac cycle.