Left ventricular strain and its pattern estimated from cine CMR and validation with DENSE

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Imaging
• Biomedical Engineering
• Radiology

Background:

• Local strain measurement is crucial for understanding myocardial biomechanics.
• Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging is a key tool for cardiac assessment.
• Estimating myocardial strain can provide insights into heart function, especially after myocardial infarction (MI).

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the feasibility of estimating myocardial strain using a b-spline deformable image registration method on cine CMR images.
• To compare strain measurements derived from cine CMR with those from Displacement Encoding with Stimulated Echoes (DENSE) CMR.
• To assess the diagnostic potential of cine CMR-derived strain in patients with myocardial infarction.

Main Methods:

• A b-spline deformable image registration technique was employed to analyze cine CMR images.
• Regional circumferential and radial left ventricular strains were calculated from both cine and DENSE CMR acquisitions.
• Three healthy volunteers and 41 patients with MI were studied using 1.5 Tesla CMR.

Main Results:

• Circumferential strain measurements showed no significant difference between cine and DENSE CMR in healthy volunteers.
• Radial strain was overestimated in cine CMR compared to DENSE CMR in healthy subjects (p < 0.01).
• Cine-derived strain patterns in patients with MI correlated well with DENSE CMR, reflecting scar extent and evolution over time, and differentiating between MI and non-MI regions.

Conclusions:

• While radial strain measurements from cine CMR exhibit variability, circumferential strain estimation is reliable and clinically useful.
• Cine CMR strain analysis holds potential for enhancing diagnostic accuracy in routine clinical practice for patients with myocardial infarction.
• This method can differentiate between various degrees of MI and non-MI tissue using standard clinical CMR sequences.