Free-breathing, Whole-heart, High-dynamic-range Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (HDR-QSM) for Imaging Hemorrhagic Infarctions

Accurately detecting and quantifying intramyocardial hemorrhage(IMH) is critical for patient management. QSM has evolved into the standard method for iron imaging. However, obtaining cardiac QSM for IMH evaluation is difficult due to well-known technical challenges. Here, we developed a motion-robust 3D multi-echo GRE technique and combined them with a high-dynamic-range QSM algorithm to derive reliable QSM maps in IMH hearts. We tested and validated it in phantom, ex-vivo, and in-vivo IMH hearts in animal models. We demonstrated that the proposed method could accurately detect IMH and reliably quantify iron concentration with a free-breathing scan under 6 minutes.