Improved myocardial tagging contrast

Abstract

Myocardial tagging is a new noninvasive MRI method that allows the study of myocardial motion with high accuracy. However, with conventional tagging techniques tagging contrast is impaired at later heart phases due to longitudinal relaxation. An improved method, called Complementary SPAtial Modulation of Magnetization (CSPAMM), which separates the component of the magnetization with the tagging information from the relaxed component by subtraction of two measurements with first a positive and then a negative tagging grid, is presented. This technique improves the grid contrast and greatly facilitates the automatic evaluation of the myocardial motion. Thus the motion assessment of the entire heart cycle becomes possible. The improvements are documented by numerical simulations and by experiments on phantoms and on human volunteers.

Strain‐encoded (SENC) magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate regional heterogeneity of myocardial strain in healthy volunteers: Comparison with conventional tagging

“…We presume that SENC may be superior to MR tagging in assessment of diastolic function as SENC does not suffer that much from rapid fading of tags, which limits interpretation of the whole cardiac cycle because RF pulses with ramped flip angles are applied to compensate for the tag fading caused by longitudinal relaxation and to maintain constant myocardial signal intensity throughout the cardiac cycle. This technique was developed by Fischer et al (30) for CSPAMM imaging.…”

Magnetic resonance imaging of regional cardiac function in the mouse

“…For tagging, the imaging sequence described above was preceded by a complementary spatial modulation of magnetization (CSPAMM) [38] preparation (Fig. 1).…”

Myocardial tagging and strain analysis at 3 Tesla: Comparison with 1.5 Tesla imaging

“…Given the increasing recognition of the role of diastolic dysfunction in several cardiac disease states (7), it would be of clinical value to overcome the limitations posed by the early decay tags and extend the analysis of regional myocardial function and strain to the entire cardiac cycle. Several methods, including complementary spatially modulated magnetization (CSPAMM) (8,9) and balanced free precession sequences (10,11) have been employed toward that end. Higher-field-strength imaging is becoming more common and provides another pathway to potentially improve tag persistence through prolonged T1 myocardial recovery and enhanced signal-tonoise ratio (SNR).…”