Abstract #1980

Tyler D, Francis J, Selvanayagam J, Robson M, Neubauer S

Sodium concentrations in the human heart increase during ischemia due to failure of the Na-K pump. Here we have used the Ultra-short TE CSI sequence run with a short repetition time to measure both the short T2 and long T2 components of the sodium signal in humans. We have quantitated these measurements using the myocardial blood pool as a reference and corrected for the receive profile of the RF coil. Myocardial tissue shows a long T2 component of 43.6+/-1.9mM/l (T2* of 18.4+/-1.6ms), and a short T2 component of 10.5+/-2.4mM/l (T2* of 1.21+/-0.41ms) across the whole heart.