Yoshiaki Morita1, Naoaki Yamada1, Teruo Noguchi2, Hiromi Hashimura1, Suzu Kanzaki1, Masahiro Higashi1, Hiroaki Naito1, Katsutoshi Murata3, Andreas Greiser4
1Department of Radiology, National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, Suita, Osaka, Japan; 2Division of Cardiology, National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, Suita, Osaka, Japan; 3Siemens Japan K.K., Tokyo, Japan; 4Siemens AG, Erlangen, Germany
Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) is the widely used method to evaluate the myocardial fibrosis in various heart diseases. However, the standard LGE using null-point method has a limitation in diagnosis of diffuse interstitial fibrosis. This study demonstrated that pre-contrast and post-contrast myocardial T1 mapping using a faster MOLLI method enable direct myocardial signal quantification and can help to evaluate the diffuse fibrotic change even that show apparently unenhanced myocardium on LGE images, in patients with dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM).