Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting: Technical Developments and Initial Clinical Validation

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has enabled non-invasive myocardial tissue characterization in a wide range of cardiovascular diseases by quantifying several tissue specific parameters such as T₁, T₂, and T2* relaxation times. Simultaneous assessment of these parameters has recently gained interest to potentially improve diagnostic accuracy and enable further understanding of the underlying disease. However, these quantitative maps are usually acquired sequentially and are not necessarily co-registered, making multi-parametric analysis challenging. Magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) has been recently introduced to unify and streamline parametric mapping into a single simultaneous, multi-parametric, fully co-registered, and efficient scan. Feasibility of cardiac MRF has been demonstrated and initial clinical validation studies are ongoing. Provide an overview of the cardiac MRF framework, recent technical developments and initial undergoing clinical validation.

Cardiac MRF has enabled the acquisition of co-registered T₁ and T₂ maps in a single, efficient scan. Initial results demonstrate feasibility of cardiac MRF in healthy subjects and small patient cohorts. Current in vivo results show a small bias and comparable precision in T₁ and T₂ with respect to conventional clinical parametric mapping approaches. This bias may be explained by several confounding factors such as magnetization transfer and field inhomogeneities, which are currently not included in the cardiac MRF model. Initial clinical validation for cardiac MRF has demonstrated good reproducibility in healthy subjects and heart transplant patients, reduced artifacts in inflammatory cardiomyopathy patients and good differentiation between hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and healthy controls. Cardiac MRF has emerged as a novel technique for simultaneous, multi-parametric, and co-registered mapping of different tissue parameters. Initial efforts have focused on enabling T₁, T₂, and fat quantification; however this approach has the potential of enabling quantification of several other parameters (such as T₂^*, diffusion, perfusion, and flow) from a single scan. Initial results in healthy subjects and patients are promising, thus further clinical validation is now warranted.