Impact of radiographer-led change on cardiac MRI protocol in porcine stem cell study to investigate myocardial repair

Motivation: Knowledge that a suboptimal cardiac MRI acquisition protocol was being implemented in a large and expensive animal research study. Goal(s): Demonstration of improved image quality in a porcine study investigating remuscularisation effects of stem cell treatment in diseased and injured hearts. Approach: Implementation of a free-breathing protocol in tandem with a breath-hold protocol in a subset of porcine subjects (n=38) who had undergone percutaneous induction of myocardial infarction. Results: Superior image quality and greater reproducibility of BH techniques with shorter scan times results in the need for remarkably smaller sample sizes to show clinically significant treatment effects. Impact: MRI radiographers are an untapped resource in many sites performing research. This study demonstrated the impact of radiographer expertise in protocol development and subsequent improvement in research data quality and outcomes in a large and expensive animal study.