Characterization of myocardial fiber orientation to assess therapeutic exosomes from cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs) in myocardial infarcted porcine with in vivo diffusion-tensor CMR on a clinical scanner

Background Diffusion-Tensor cardiovascular magnetic resonance (DT-CMR) is capable of mapping myocardial fiber orientation [1,2]. It has been demonstrated in myocardial infarction (MI) murine models that DT-CMR can identify the effects of stem cell therapy on myocardial fiber orientation [3]. However, it remains to be seen if this recent work is translatable to large animal and clinical studies. We propose the application of a well-established in vivo cardiac DT-CMR technique [4] to characterize myocardial fiber orientation before and after the novel regenerative therapy of using intramyocardial injection of exosomes from cardiosphere-derived cells (CDCs) in a MI porcine model.