Synopsis
Cardiovascular
MRI provides detailed information about the health status of the heart and the
progression of disease. This talk will give course participants an overview of
current methods used to evaluate cardiac performance on a global and regional
level. Particular focus will be on strengths and weakness of methods to
quantify myocardial strain, and atlas based methods for quantifying cardiac remodelling
as z-scores.
Highlights
·
Heart shape and motion can be
precisely and accurately quantified from cine cardiac MRI
·
DENSE imaging is best for
regional strain, but SSFP feature tracking can be used for average strains
·
Torsion is a useful index of
cardiac function, but requires normalization for heart size
·
Atlas-based analysis can give z-scores
quantifying remodelling in relation to a reference population
Target Audience
Clinicians,
engineers and physicists seeking an understanding of how MRI provides insight
into the function of the heart.Outcome/Objectives
Cardiovascular MRI provides detailed information
about the health status of the heart and the progression of disease. This talk
will give course participants an overview of current methods used to evaluate
cardiac performance on a global and regional level. Particular focus will be on
strengths and weakness of methods to quantify myocardial strain, and atlas
based methods for quantifying cardiac remodelling as z-scores.Methods
The standard clinical assessment of global pump
function comprises sequential 2D breath-hold cine steady state free precession
(SSFP) imaging in multiple slices covering the heart. MRI enables a variety of
imaging protocols for the detailed analysis of myocardial strain. The
tomographic nature of MRI data lends itself to building 3D atlases of cardiac
function. Statistical atlases of shape and function enable automatic characterization
of clinical shape and motion abnormalities [1].Results
Steady state free precession remains the workhorse
for the evaluation of cardiac function. Atlas based methods have been used to
examine the shape differences related to risk factors in the asymptomatic
population, and developing disease. In the area of strain imaging, DENSE and
SPAMM as well as SSFP feature tracking enable estimation of myocardial strain [2]. Recent advances in machine learning enable more automated analysis
[3].Conclusions
Cardiovascular MRI offers a variety of techniques for
the evaluation of cardiac performance. The high accuracy and precision of MRI,
combined with the ability to image all areas of the heart with equal fidelity
and provide a variety of contrast mechanisms, have led to an increasing application
in research and clinical studies. Acknowledgements
No acknowledgement found.References
[1] X.
Zhang, P. Medrano-Gracia, B. Ambale-Venkatesh, D. A. Bluemke, B. R. Cowan, J.
P. Finn, et al., "Orthogonal
decomposition of left ventricular remodelling in myocardial infarction," Gigascience, Feb 06 2017.
[2] A.
A. Young, B. Li, R. S. Kirton, and B. R. Cowan, "Generalized
spatiotemporal myocardial strain analysis for DENSE and SPAMM imaging," Magn Reson Med, Aug 29 2011.
[3] M.
R. Avendi, A. Kheradvar, and H. Jafarkhani, "A combined deep-learning and
deformable-model approach to fully automatic segmentation of the left ventricle
in cardiac MRI," Med Image Anal, vol.
30, pp. 108-19, May 2016.