BACKGROUND Because endomyocardial biopsy has low sensitivity of about 20%, it can be performed near to myocardium that presented as late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) in cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR). However the important issue of comparing topography of CMR and histological findings has not yet been investigated. Thus the current study was performed using an animal model of myocardit...

Despite prompt revascularization, some patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) develop myocardial scars, which can be visualized by late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) in cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (CMR). Our goal was to identify angiographic findings that were predictive for scar development in patients after reperfused AMI.We examined 136 patients after first ST-elevated ...

BACKGROUND We conducted a prospective longitudinal study to investigate the yet unknown clinical significance of myocardial fibrosis in patients with non-ischemic cardiomyopathy without history of congestive heart failure (CHF). METHODS AND RESULTS At 3 tertiary referral centers, 228 patients with non-ischemic cardiomyopathy without history of CHF were studied with cardiovascular magnetic res...

OBJECTIVES The objective of this study was to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of the predictive value of late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) for future cardiovascular events and death in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). BACKGROUND The utility of LGE for detecting myocardial fibrosis is well established. The prognostic value of LGE in HCM has been...

PURPOSE To develop a novel MR sequence for combined three-dimensional (3D) phase-sensitive (PS) late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) and T1 mapping to allow for simultaneous assessment of focal and diffuse myocardial fibrosis. METHODS In the proposed sequence, four 3D imaging volumes are acquired with different T1 weightings using a combined saturation and inversion preparation, after administra...

BACKGROUND Myocardial fibrosis is frequently identified in patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). The aim of this study was to investigate the role of myocardial fibrosis detected by late gadolinium-enhancement (LGE) cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) as a potential arrhythmogenic substrate in HCM. We hypothesized that the extent of LGE might be associated with the inducibility o...

BACKGROUND Cardiovascular-MR (CMR) is the gold standard for quantifying myocardial infarction using late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) technique. Both 2D- and 3D-LGE-sequences are used in clinical practise and in clinical and experimental studies for infarct quantification. Therefore the aim of this study was to investigate if image acquisitions with 2D- and 3D-LGE show the same infarct size in ...

BACKGROUND Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of ventricular scar has been shown to be accurate for detection and characterization of arrhythmia substrates. However, the majority of patients referred for ventricular tachycardia (VT) ablation have an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), which obscures image integrity and the clinical utility of MRI. OBJ...

Background Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) cardiac MRI is the clinical gold standard for non-invasive characterization of myocardial scar [1]. However, up to 75% of patients who may benefit from LGE MRI have preexisting implanted cardiac devices such as implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) and pacemakers (PM) [2]. The presence of an ICD produces hyper-intensity (HI) image artifacts i...

Results Nine out of 50 patients with HCM (18 %) showed no fibrosis on LGE-CMR. In the remaining 41 patients, mean size of fibrosis was 13,3 ± 10,3% on LGE-CMR. In all patients, the mean MMP9 level was 54,4 ± 35,2 ng/ ml. Size of fibrosis on LGE-CMR strongly correlated with MMP9 levels (R2 = 0,557, Pearson’s r = 0,75, p < 0,01). In the 9 patients with no LGE, MMP9 was with 29,6 ± 14,2 ng/ml sign...