Dispersion of hyperenhancement in late gadolinium enhancement cardiovascular magnetic resonance measured with Moran's I is associated with a decrement in LVEF 6 months after cardiotoxic chemotherapy

Background In animals and human subjects, an increase in background signal intensity observed on late gadolinium enhanced (LGE-SI) images is associated with a decrement in left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) during receipt of anthracycline chemotherapy. Moran’s I statistic is a measurement of spatial dispersion of hyperenhanced voxels relative to the mean myocardial LGE-SI, ranging from highly clustered (I=+1) to highly diffuse (I=-1) (Figure 1). We hypothesize that a change in the distribution of hyperenhanced voxels (due to the development of high signal “micro clusters”) is associated with a decrement in LVEF after cardiotoxic chemotherapy.