Myocardial tagging with steady state free precession techniques and semi-automatic postprocessing--impact on...

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Imaging
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Background:

• Myocardial tagging is crucial for assessing cardiac mechanics.
• Evaluating the entire cardiac cycle is essential for accurate diagnosis.
• Gradient-echo (GRE) and steady-state free precession (SSFP) are common MRI sequences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the diagnostic performance of myocardial tagging sequences.
• To evaluate the share of the cardiac cycle assessable with different MRI techniques.
• To determine the optimal sequence for comprehensive cardiac cycle assessment.

Main Methods:

• 33 patients underwent 1.5 T GRE tagging.
• 18 patients underwent 1.5 T SSFP tagging.
• 11 patients underwent 3 T GRE tagging.
• Image quality and assessable cardiac cycle portions were graded by two observers.

Main Results:

• 1.5 T GRE yielded lower image quality (median 4.0) and incomplete systole assessment (69%).
• 1.5 T SSFP significantly improved image quality (median 2.0) and allowed whole cardiac cycle assessment in 71% of patients.
• 3 T GRE showed comparable results to 1.5 T SSFP (median 2.9 image quality, 70% whole cycle assessment).
• SSFP at 1.5 T enabled semi-automatic evaluation of the entire cardiac cycle in a majority of patients.

Conclusions:

• Myocardial tagging with SSFP readout at 1.5 T is highly effective.
• This technique facilitates semi-automatic assessment of the whole cardiac cycle.
• SSFP offers superior diagnostic value for cardiac mechanics evaluation compared to GRE.