Keywords:
Cardiovascular system, Cardiac, MR, Imaging sequences, Inflammation
Authors:
M. Polacin1, I. Kapos1, M. Gastl1, F. Morsbach1, A. Gotschy2, H. Alkadhi1, R. Manka1; 1Zurich/CH, 2Zürich/CH
DOI:
10.26044/ecr2019/C-1605
Aims and objectives
Cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) has an exclusive role in the noninvasive detection of myocardial inflammation.
Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) imaging has a high sensitivity for the detection of fibrous tissue,
commonly found in myocarditis.
In acute myocarditis,
the presence of myocardial fibrosis has diagnostic and prognostic value.
Therefore,
LGE imaging has become a key evaluation tool in the difficult diagnosis of this disease.
Long acquisition times are a big drawback of CMR,
so optimization of imaging protocols is compelling for patient benefit and for an efficient clinical workflow.
Acquisition time can be greatly reduced by using a fast,
3D inversion recovery MR imaging sequence (3D LGE) that acquires the myocardial volume in a single breath-hold in contrast to standard,
multiple breath-hold 2D sequences (2D LGE).
We compared both sequences and evaluated image quality and the amount of myocardial fibrosis.