Endogenous assessment of diffuse myocardial fibrosis in patients with T 1ρ -mapping

• Published in: Journal of magnetic resonance imaging Vol. 45; no. 1; p. 132
• Main Authors: van Oorschot, Joep W M, Güçlü, Fatih, de Jong, Sanne, Chamuleau, Steven A J, Luijten, Peter R, Leiner, Tim, Zwanenburg, Jaco J M
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.01.2017
• Subjects: Algorithms; Cardiac Imaging Techniques - methods; Cardiomyopathy, Dilated - complications; Cardiomyopathy, Dilated - diagnostic imaging; Cardiomyopathy, Dilated - pathology; Diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Endomyocardial Fibrosis - diagnostic imaging; Endomyocardial Fibrosis - etiology; Endomyocardial Fibrosis - pathology; Female; Heart Transplantation; Humans; Image Enhancement - methods; Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted - methods; In Vitro Techniques; Male; Middle Aged; Reproducibility of Results; Sensitivity and Specificity; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; endogenous; spin-lock; native contrast; T1rho; T1ρ-mapping; DCM; cardiac
• ISSN: 1522-2586
• DOI: 10.1002/jmri.25340

Recently, it was shown that a significantly higher T is found in compact myocardial fibrosis after chronic myocardial infarction. In this study, we investigated the feasibility of native T -mapping for the detection of diffuse myocardial fibrosis in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). T -mapping was performed on three explanted hearts from DCM patients at 3 Tesla (T). Histological fibrosis quantification was performed, and compared with the T -relaxation times in the heart. Furthermore, twenty DCM patients underwent an MRI at 1.5T. Native T -maps, native T -maps, and extracellular volume (ECV)-maps were acquired. Additionally, eight healthy volunteers were scanned for reference values. A significant correlation (Pearson r = 0.49; P = 0.005) was found between ex vivo T -values and fibrosis fraction from histology. Additionally, a significantly higher T -relaxation time (55.2 ± 2.7 ms) was found in DCM patients compared with healthy control subjects (51.5 ± 1.2 ms) (P = 0.0024). The relation between in vivo T -values and ECV-values was significant (Pearson r = 0.66). No significant relation was found between native T - and ECV-values in this study (P = 0.89). This study showed proof of principle for the endogenous detection of diffuse myocardial fibrosis with T -MRI. Ex vivo and in vivo experiments showed promising results that T -MRI can be used to measure the extent of diffuse myocardial fibrosis in the myocardium. 2 J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2017;45:132-138.