Detecting ACS & Identifying Acute Ischemic Territories with Cardiac Phase-Resolved BOLD MRI at Rest

Sotirios Tsaftaris¹, ², Xiangzhi Zhou², Richard Tang³, James Min³, Debiao Li, ²³, Rohan Dharmakumar, ²³

Noninvasive imaging approaches that can rapidly assess an ongoing ischemia can be of great value in detecting and triaging patients experiencing acute coronary syndromes (ACS), particularly in cases of non ST elevation myocardial infarction. We rely on detecting systolic and diastolic SSFP signal changes related to perturbation in cardiac phase-dependent blood volume and oxygenation associated with severe coronary narrowing on the basis of cardiac phase-resolved Blood-Oxygen-Level-Dependent imaging. We show (in canines) that we can assess functional/volumetric status and non-invasively identify ischemic territories under resting conditions in a single scan without any exogenous contrast media.