Dark Blood Delayed Enhancement MRI for Evaluation of Myocardial Infarction and Non-Ischemic Cardiomyopathy in a Clinical Setting

Cormac Farrelly¹, Wolfgang Rehwald², Aoife Keeling¹, John Sheehan¹, James Carr¹

Standard viability imaging are bright blood techniques and as such are limited in their evaluation of subendocardial areas of enhancement. This is because there is poor contrast between blood-pool and sub-endocardial foci of enhancement. Using a previously described dark blood technique that simultaneously nulls the blood-pool and myocardium 12 patients with subendocardial enhancement and clinical evidence of myocardial infarction and 10 patients with non-ischemic cardiomyopathy were evaluated.All patients demonstrated increased CNR between the hyper-enhancing myocardium and the blood pool on the dark blood technique compared to standard segmented TurboFLASH with acceptable preservation of CNR between hyper-enhancement and normal myocardium.This technique can be useful in a clinical setting for evaluation of infarction and non-ischemic cardiomyopathy.