Ruud B. van Heeswijk1, 2, Hlne Feliciano1, 2, Gabriele Bonanno1, 2, Simone Coppo1, 2, Nathalie Lauriers3, Didier Locca3, Juerg Schwitter3
1Department of Radiology, University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne (UNIL), Lausanne, Switzerland; 2Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM), Lausanne, Switzerland; 3Center for Cardiac Magnetic Resonance and Cardiology Service, University Hospital of Lausanne (CHUV), Lausanne, Switzerland
A novel navigator-gated and -corrected free-breathing cardiac T2-mapping methodology for longitudinal studies at 3T was developed and optimized using numerical simulations and phantom studies. A reference phantom with a known T2 is placed in the field-of-view while the T2 fitting procedure was optimized empirically for improved accuracy and reproducibility of the T2 measurements. The performance of this methodology was ascertained quantitatively in healthy adult human volunteers before a small cohort of myocardial infarction patients was investigated.