Abstract #1203

Dunn J, Shworak N, Palac R, Fay J, Hargreaves J, Chan S, O'Brien B, Mitchell J, Foniok T, Kirk D

3D MR microscopy was used to image isolated hearts to study myxomatous valvular disease (MVD) in a unique transgenic mouse. Valve damage was confirmed in vivo with echocardiography. 3D gradient echo MRI was undertaken at 9.4T in gadolinium enhancement to obtain pixel resolution of 50x50x78&[micro]m. Significant post-processing was undertaken with novel 3D rendering software that has such efficiency improvements to allow it to operate interactively on a desktop computer. Processing included non-uniformity correction and a non-linear adaptive noise filter. Images are shown of surface rendering and of mitral valves of mouse hearts.