Do myocardial balanced steady-state free precession signal intensity curves allow to distinguish infarct patients from healthy subjects?

Pre-contrast balanced steady-state free precession (bssfp) cine images seem to contain sufficient information to identify patients with an acute or chronic myocardial infarction using radiomics or deep learning methods. The reason remains however to be elucidated. It is also unclear if the cardiac phase should be considered although radiomics features vary through the heart cycle. In this study we show that the known global myocardial bssfp signal intensity variations observed in healthy subject are in fact segment dependent and have a reproducible three peak profile. In patients with acute myocardial infarct these profiles shows segment dependent alterations vs. controls.