Strain imaging using cardiac magnetic resonance.

Area of Science:

• Cardiology
• Medical Imaging
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) is the gold standard for assessing biventricular morphology and function.
• Ejection fractions (EFs) are key objective measures, but changes often appear late in cardiac disease.
• Current subjective wall motion analysis has significant error rates, limiting regional impairment detection.

Purpose of the Study:

• To comprehensively review CMR techniques for quantifying myocardial deformation.
• To explore the application of these techniques in various clinical scenarios.
• To enhance the assessment of global and regional left ventricular (LV) function.

Main Methods:

• Review of existing literature on CMR-based myocardial deformation analysis.
• Compilation of techniques including strain, strain rate, and torsion.
• Discussion of clinical applications and validation studies.

Main Results:

• Myocardial deformation analysis provides sensitive, quantitative measures of cardiac function.
• Techniques like feature tracking and tagging offer insights into regional myocardial mechanics.
• These methods improve upon traditional EF and subjective wall motion assessments.

Conclusions:

• CMR myocardial deformation techniques offer superior quantification of cardiac function.
• These advanced methods are crucial for early detection and characterization of myocardial impairment.
• The review provides a compendium for applying these techniques in clinical practice.