Late gadolinium enhanced (LGE) MRI often suffers from poor scar-to-blood contrast when used for detection of endocardial scar due to the bright signal of adjacent blood. We report a method that significantly reduces left ventricular blood signal by setting a shorter inversion time in combination with a phase-sensitive inversion recovery (PSIR) sequence. Nulling the left ventricular blood signal with PSIR significantly increases scar-to-blood contrast since blood signal and scar signal no longer have similar signal levels. As no additional magnetization preparation is used, clinical application on current MR systems is readily available without the need for software modifications or additional training.
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