Cardiac Tissue Characterisation
Accurate assessment of the damage to the heart is important to guide
therapy. Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging can describe the pathology
with higher resolution images compared with Single Proton Emission
Computed Tomography (SPECT) or ultrasound. But similarly to other
methods, the diagnosis depends on subjective evaluation of the image
intensities, which makes it difficult to monitor long term progress or
detect diffuse whole-heart pathology.
We are addressing these issues using Quantitative Magnetic Resonance
methods. These deliver so-called maps of absolutely denominated values
to characterise the normal state of the tissue in an objective manner. We are
particularly interested in optimising the mapping of the Magnetic
Resonance relaxation parameters called T1 and T2, which require no
intervention to the patient and thus have no potential side-effects.
The drawback is the long imaging time, but we have recently decreased this to less than 10 seconds. Our pilot images in the figure panel below show good delineation of pathology simial to established methods with gadolinium contrast
enhancement.
The green shades show the normal myocardium with
T1 between 1100-1300 milliseconds. The damaged area is swollen, has
more water and therefore has yellow and red shades indicative of
pathologically long T1 relaxation times.
