MRI of Longitudinal Myocardial Strain using Multislice Cine DENSE with Through-plane Displacement Encoding

Introduction Cine DENSE (Displacement Encoding with Stimulated Echoes) is a quantitative MRI method for imaging myocardial displacement and strain. Typically, cine DENSE images of the heart are acquired in a short-axis plane, and the in-plane circumferential and radial displacements and strains are measured. However, quantitative imaging of longitudinal myocardial motion is also important, as is routinely performed in echocardiography, the most common modality for imaging cardiac function. The purpose of the present study was to develop a cine DENSE pulse sequence for quantitative imaging of longitudinal motion, where two adjacent short-axis slices are encoded for through-plane (longitudinal) displacement and are simultaneously acquired. Displacement trajectories measured from the two slices are used to calculate longitudinal strain.