Jeanette Schulz-Menger, M.D.

Jaime L. Shaw^1,2, Janet Wei³, Puja K. Mehta³, David Chen¹, Michael Nelson^1,3, Louise E.J. Thomson³, Daniel S. Berman³, C. Noel Bairey Merz³, Debiao Li^1,2, and Behzad Sharif^1
1Biomedical Imaging Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ²Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ³Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Abnormally elevated myocardial native T1 values are known to suggest diffuse myocardial fibrosis. In this study, we hypothesized that native myocardial T1 would be abnormally elevated in subjects with signs and symptoms of ischemia, no obstructive coronary artery disease (CAD), and suspected coronary microvascular dysfunction (CMD). We measured myocardial native T1 in symptomatic women with no obstructed CAD enrolled in a single-site cohort of the NHLBI-sponsored WISE-Coronary Vascular Dysfunction study. Relative to published normal native T1 values, native T1 values in women with signs and symptoms of ischemia and no obstructive CAD were significantly elevated.

Han W Kim¹, Wolfgang G Rehwald², David C Wendell¹, Elizabeth R Jenista¹, Lowie Van Assche¹, Christoph Jensen¹, Peter Filev¹, Enn-Ling Chen¹, Michele A Parker¹, and Raymond J Kim^1
1Cardiology/Medicine, Duke Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Center, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, United States, ²Siemens Healthcare, NC, United States

PURPOSE. Flow-Independent Dark-blood DeLayed-Enhancement (FIDDLE) allows visualization of tissue contrast-enhancement with blood-pool suppression. METHODS. We validated FIDDLE in a canine model of myocardial infarction (MI) and demonstrated feasibility in patients. FIDDLE and standard delayed-enhancement-MRI (DE-MRI) were compared to histopathology (animals) and the infarct-related-artery by cath (patients). RESULTS. FIDDLE black-blood images were successfully obtained in all animals and patients, and provided improved accuracy for the diagnosis of MI compared with DE-MRI. CONCLUSIONS. We have developed a novel technique that provides tissue contrast-enhancement simultaneous with blood-suppression. Validation and feasibility is demonstrated for diagnosis of MI; additional applications are expected beyond cardiac imaging.

James Goldfarb^1,2
1Department of Research and Education, Saint Francis Hospital, Roslyn, NY, United States, ²Biomedical Engineering, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, United States

A new susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) method is implemented and evaluated for the detection of intramyocardial hemorrhage in myocardial infarction. Intramyocardial fat and hemorrhage are features of chronic and acute myocardial infarction, respectively. Use of fat-water separation processing before conventional SWI image construction removes susceptibility contributions from intramyocardial fat and improves the specificity of IMH detection. Results are presented from 20 patients with acute and chronic myocardial infarction.

Tobias Saam, M.D.

Qi Yang^1,2, Haiqing Song², Hongqi Zhang², Feng Ling², Yiu-Cho Chung³, Lei Zhang³, Zhaoyang Fan¹, Xin Liu³, Kuncheng Li², and Debiao Li^1
1Biomedical Imaging Research Institute, Cedars Sinai Medical Center, LA, CA, United States, ²Xuanwu Hospital, Beijing, Beijing, China, ³Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academic of Sciences, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

The Intracranial Vessel Wall MR Registry sought to evaluate indications, image quality, safety and impact on patient management of clinical routine intracranial vessel wall MR in a large number of cases (n=325). Based on our data intracranial vessel wall MR is frequently performed in daily clinical routine. The most important indications were workup of atherosclerotic disease (32%), risk stratification in suspected dissection(25%), as well as assessment of venous sinus thrombosis (20%).

Maobin Guan¹, Huijun Chen², Zhu Zhu¹, Le He², Qiang Zhang², Niranjan Balu³, Chun Yuan^2,3, and Xihai Zhao^2
1Department of Radiology, Yangzhou First People's Hospital, Yangzhou, China, ²Center for Biomedical Imaging research, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing, China, ³Department of Radiology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States

This study investigated the atherosclerotic plaque distribution in different femoral artery segments of asymptomatic old adults by 3D MR vessel wall imaging. We found that femoral artery plaque was prevalent in old adults, particularly in the segment of popliteal artery segment of femoral artery. After normalized the natural vessel size along femoral artery longitudinally, we found that popliteal artery segment showed the largest plaque burden as measured by NWI among all femoral artery segments. Our findings suggest that more attention needs to be paid to the popliteal artery segment of femoral artery in old adults for atherosclerotic disease care.