Abstract #0487

Myocardial Tagging in the Polar Coordinate System; Initial Clinical Results

Sarah N. Khan¹, Abbas N. Moghaddam², Razieh Kaveh², Ali Nsair³, Mona Bhatia⁴, J. Paul Finn⁵

¹Diagnostic Cardiovascular Imaging, Department of Radiology,, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States; ²Biomedical Engineering, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran; ³Department of Cardiology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States; ⁴Diagnostic Cardiovascular Imaging, Department of Radiology, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States; ⁵Diagnostic Cardiovascular Imaging, Department of Radiology, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States

We compared grid, radial and circular tagging patterns for assessment of radial and circumferential myocardial displacement in 10 volunteers and 18 patients (10 congenital heart disease (CHD) and 8 cardiomyopathy (CM)). Images were scored subjectively and processed quantitatively for circumferential and radial strain. Polar tagging was easier to interpret (ave 3.6) than grid tagging (ave 2.9). Tag quality and confidence in strain assessment was similar among the three tag groups. Patients with CM had diminished radial strain rate (1.190.26 sec-1) when compared to volunteers (1.640.61 sec-1). We conclude that polar tagging has advantages for the visual and quantitative assessment of myocardial strain.