Thanh D. Nguyen1, Matthew D. Cham1, Jason Chinitz2, Pascal Spincemaille1, James K. Min1,2, Bruce B. Lerman2, Martin R. Prince1, Yi Wang1, Jonathan W. Weinsaft1,2
1Radiology, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA; 2Medicine/Greenberg Cardiology Division, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA
Left atrial appendage (LAA) imaging is important as this is a primary site for cardiac thrombus which causes embolic events. Delayed enhancement MRI (DE-MRI) has recently been shown to accurately evaluate left ventricular thrombus, but its utility for LAA imaging is not known. In this study, LAA imaging by DE-MRI and black blood fast spin echo (BB-FSE) were compared to a reference of cine SSFP. Single shot and segmented DE-MRI were found to provide similar measurements of LAA size and image contrast compared to SSFP. BB-FSE imaging suffers from severe intraluminal signal artifacts, leading to inaccurate measurements.