Abstract #0146
             SIMULTANEOUS IMAGING OF MYOCARDIAL FUNCTION AND VIABILITY IN PATIENTS
             Osman N,  Ibrahim E,  Stuber M,  Weiss R,  Spooner A
             Johns Hopkins University
             The assessment of myocardial viability is important for therapeutic decision-making in patients with myocardial infarction. In addition, cardiac functional images provide complementary information about myocardium. Composite strain encoding (C-SENC) imaging provides simultaneous functional and viability images of myocardium. In this work, the method was tested on seven patients, and the resulting viability images were validated against conventional delayed-enhancement (DE) images. The two images showed good agreement in determining myocardial infarction. C-SENC imaging took almost the same time as DE imaging, but resulted in additional functional images. This allowed for constructing one composite image that showed both functional and viability information.