Abstract #4560

Improved Late Gadolinium Enhancement Cardiac MRI for Patients with Implanted Cardiac Devices

Shams Rashid¹, Stanislas Rapacchi¹, Kyung H. Sung¹, Marmar Vaseghi², Kalyanam Shivkumar², J. Paul Finn¹, Peng Hu¹

¹Radiological Sciences, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States; ²Cardiac Arrhythmia Center, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Recent studies show that cardiac MRI,including LGE MRI, can be safely performed in patients with implanted cardiac devices (ICDs and pacemakers). However, the current LGE sequence suffers from hyperintensity artifacts, which prevent diagnostic utility of the images or give rise to false detection of scar tissue. We designed a new LGE sequence which utilizes a wideband inversion pulse that can resolve these artifacts. We used both the standard LGE sequence and our new sequence to image a volunteer and two ICD patients, and demonstrated that our new sequence can correct the artifacts and prevent incorrect assessment of myocardial scar.