High signal intensity of the myocardium on T2-weighted images often locates outside LGE and reflects myocardial damage, which is related to syncope in ASH.

In DCM patients with LVEF <35%, the postcontrast myocardial T1 value correlated with the severity of cardiac dysfunction, and the absence of DE indicated the low risk of SVT. Both MRI parameters should be estimated because they may reflect discrete forms of myocardial damages in patients with DCM.

Tagging CMR has been established as the standard reference for measurement of myocardial strain. The current 2D tagging technique requires multiple breath-holds to cover the whole heart and cannot show the 3D motions of the left ventricle. We performed fast 3-breath-hold 3D tagging with localized tagging preparation and complementary spatial modulation of magnetization in 10 patients with hypertrophic myocardial diseases and 6 normal volunteers. The left wall motion was observed at any view angle, which allowed for the identification of regional and global hypokinesis using the fast 3D tagging. Although a decrease in the circumferential strain and LGE were observed at the basal septum in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, they were not located together in each patient. In hypertensive heart disease, the decrease in circumferential strain was observed more widely than LGE, and the summed strain of all segments was significantly decreased. The decrease in strain and LGE were observed diffusely in cardiac amyloidosis. In conclusion, fast 3-breath-hold 3D tagging is feasible for the regional and global strain analysis. The location of reduced circumferential strain is not necessarily the same as that of LGE and is related to the global cardiac function in patients with hypertrophic myocardial diseases.

The location of MO identified by MRI may be related to the effectiveness of PTSMA at the short-term follow-up. The left-sided MO is related to complete improvement in clinical symptoms and pressure gradients.

Purpose: We investigated whether corticomedullary differentiation (CMD) increased to a pseudonormal appearance on T 1 -weighted magnetic resonance (MR) images in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) with cirrhosis compared with patients with CKD without chronic liver disease.Methods: We assessed CMD on T 1 -weighted MR images of 32 patients with CKD with liver cirrhosis and 32 age-matched patients with CKD without liver cirrhosis, grading CMD visualization as good, moderate, or poor. We calculated quantitative CMD by the ratio of the signal intensity of the cortex to that of the medulla.Results: The proportions of patients in each of the good, moderate, and poor groups differed significantly between those with and without liver cirrhosis (P = 0.048). In patients with CKD with liver cirrhosis, the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) differed between those with poor CMD and those with good or moderate CMD (P < 0.01) but not between those with good and those with moderate CMD. In patients with CKD without cirrhosis, the eGFR differed significantly among the good, moderate, and poor CMD groups (P < 0.05). We observed no significant correlation between CMD and eGFR in patients with and without cirrhosis (P < 0.05, r = 0.62).Conclusion: CMD of the kidney had a pseudonormal appearance on T 1 -weighted MR imaging in patients with CKD with cirrhosis.

Purpose: We evaluated the feasibility of contrast-enhanced steady-state free precession (ceSSFP) in the assessment of myocardial injury and obstruction of the left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) in patients with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy (HOCM) after alcohol septal ablation (ASA).Methods: Twelve patients with HOCM underwent 16 magnetic resonance (MR) examinations following ASA. Precontrast SSFP, ceSSFP and late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) imaging were performed with a 1.5-tesla imager. ceSSFP was performed 3 to 7 min after gadolinium injection. We visually and quantitatively evaluated the signal patterns of the myocardium after ASA on SSFP and LGE MR imaging. We observed the LVOT using ceSSFP in the 3-chamber view.Results: We could visualize ASA-induced myocardial infarction (MI) in all 16 studies by LGE and ceSSFP but in only 6 studies (37.5%) by precontrast SSFP. Contrast was higher between MI and remote myocardium with LGE than ceSSFP (P < 0.01). ASA-induced hypointense regions were well visualized by the 2 sequences after contrast in the 7 patients who underwent MR imaging within 7 weeks of ASA and in a few patients after 80 weeks from ASA. The ceSSFP allowed comparable visualization of the jet flow crossing the LVOT to that derived from echocardiographic data.Conclusion: Contrast-enhanced steady-state free precession allows assessment of myocardial injury as well as of the left ventricular outflow tract after alcohol septal ablation in a single scan without penalty in scan time and cine imaging contrast.