Abstract #2011

Quantification of Pulmonary Edema in Heart Failure Patients and Controls with B1-Field Corrected Free-Breathing MRI

Kelvin Chow¹, Jessica Scott², Ben Esch², Mark Haykowsky³, Richard Thompson¹, Ian Paterson⁴

¹Biomedical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; ²Cardiovascular Physiology and Rehabilitation Laboratory, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; ³Physical Therapy, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; ⁴Division of Cardiology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Quantitative pulmonary edema measurements were made in healthy subjects and heart failure patients at 1.5T using a free-breathing HASTE sequence with B₁-field correction. Spatial distribution of the B₁-field was found to have a significant effect on water density measurements (10% underestimation within the left lung), with an average corrected lung water density of 232% in healthy subjects and 16% to 37% in heart failure patients. In patients, MRI-derived lung water correlated well with invasively measured left ventricular end-diastolic pressure (R²=0.77) (elevated LVEDP is the primary cause of cardiogenic pulmonary edema) and blood serum b-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) (R² = 0.75).