Myocytes have a laminar organization, where sheets of myocytes interleave with collagen-lined shear layers. Cardiac diffusion tensor imaging is capable of probing sheet dynamics with secondary diffusion directions, although questions remain about cardiac strain being a possible confounder. Here we study the validity of strain-correcting cardiac diffusion tensor data by directly comparing in vivo DTI data without and with strain correction, to ex vivo DTI data of the same porcine hearts arrested in a diastolic or systolic conformation. Results show that the current strain correction model exaggerates the contribution of microscopic strain to diffusion resulting in an over-correction.
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