Mitral annular kinetics in mitral regurgitation

Methods Population: Patients with degenerative mitral regurgitation (n = 35) with normal LV EF pre and 12 months post mitral valve repair. Normal volunteers (n = 51). Image Acquisition: All participants underwent MRI on a 1.5T scanner (GE Healthcare) optimized for cardiac application. An ECG-gated, breath-hold steady state free precision technique was used to obtain 2 chamber and 4 chamber views with 20 phase imaged in each cardiac cycle. Image Analysis: At end diastole (ED) and end systole (ES), anterior and inferior MA landmarks were manually marked on 2 chamber views. Septal, lateral and apex MA landmarks were marked on 4 chamber views. All landmarks were then automatically propagated to the remaining phases using custom software [1] and manually verified. In each phase, the MA was approximated by a flat plane fit to the 4 landmarks. The MA centroid and plane normal was