Quantitative assessment of intramyocardial function using Cine DENSE MRI: a validation study

Non-invasive assessment of myocardial function plays a critical role in the management of heart disease. Conventional imaging modalities, such as echocardiography and cine MRI, are widely used for quantitative assessment of global cardiac function and qualitative assessment of regional cardiac function. Quantitative assessment of regional wall motion may additionally improve the accuracy of detecting wall motion abnormalities due to heart disease. Recently, fast cine displacement-encoded (DENSE) MRI was developed to produce relatively high quality strain maps within clinically acceptable breath-hold duration of 12 cardiac cycles [1]. While this pulse sequence is promising for clinical applications, it has not been validated. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to validate the relative accuracy of fast cine DENSE MRI in controls and patients with heart disease.