Myocardial Viability Imaging using HYPR-based MRI Techniques

INTRODUCTION Assessing myocardial viability in patients with coronary artery disease and left ventricular dysfunction can be critical to determine which patients might benefit from revascularization [1]. Delayed-enhancement MR imaging (DE-MRI) has shown promise in distinguishing healthy myocardium from infarcted myocardium since infarcted myocardium exhibits higher signal than normal myocardium [2-3]. However, the selection of optimal inversion time (TI), which depends on contrast dosage and also varies from patient to patient, to null normal myocardium signal greatly affects the diagnostic value. Therefore, a fast MRI technique that allows retrospective selection of TI to null normal myocardium would be advantageous. Here, we have investigated the potential of HYPR-based DE-MRI techniques [4-5] for 2D / 3D myocardial viability imaging to allow retrospective selection of inversion time (TI) for nulling normal myocardial signal.