Abstract #4502

Helix Angle (HA) Healthy Statistical Average Technique for HA Quantification in vivo Cardiac Diffusion Tensor Imaging

Pedro Ferreira¹, Sonia Nielles-Vallespin², Peter David Gatehouse¹, Ranil de Silva¹, Jennifer Keegan¹, Peter Speier³, Thorsten Feiweier⁴, Timothy G. Reese⁵, Tevfik Ismail¹, Andrew Scott¹, Choukri Mekkaoui⁵, David E. Sosnovik⁵, David N. Firmin¹

¹BRU, Royal Brompton Hospital, London, United Kingdom; ²National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD, United States; ³MR Application & Workflow Development, Siemens, Erlangen, Germany; ⁴MR Application & Workflow Development, Siemens AG, Erlangen, Germany; ⁵Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States

A healthy average HA map was synthesised from a dataset of 10 healthy volunteers, matching the myocardial shape of the DTI data being analysed. This map allows for a direct pixel-by-pixel comparison of the cardiac fibres orientation in vivo. This technique was subsequently applied to evaluate the improved accuracy of in vivo cardiac DTI data sets based on numbers of averages, together with mean diffusivity and fractional anisotropy quantitation.