Abstract #1221

Jung B, Hennig J, Markl M

Information on the structure and dynamics of the muscle fibers in the human heart might provide significant insight into principles of the mechanics of ventricular contraction. Fiber orientation is inherently linked to cardiac wall motion, which can be measured with phase contrast MRI. This technique might be used to derive surrogate parameters describing the fiber structure of the left ventricle. High temporal resolution phase contrast measurements were performed during free-breathing. Based on the assumption that accelerations are related to the forces generated by the muscle fibers, a postprocessing evaluation with a tracking algorithm for acceleration fields derived from the velocity data was applied to different cardiac frames.