Why the study?
To develop a magnetic resonance elastography protocol to detect in vivo cardiac stiffness in rats.
Can magnetic resonance elastography detect in vivo cardiac stiffness across the cardiac cycle in a healthy rat model?
Can magnetic resonance elastography detect in vivo cardiac stiffness across the cardiac cycle in a healthy rat model?
Cardiac magnetic resonance elastography is feasible in rats and can detect physiological changes in cardiac stiffness across the cardiac cycle.
Should not change practice; leaves open multi-animal and disease-model validation of in-vivo rat cardiac MRE.
PURPOSE: Develop a MR elastography (MRE) protocol to detect in vivo cardiac stiffness in rats. METHODS: This study was approved by the National Animal Research Authority. A healthy, adult, male Sprague-Dawley rat underwent cardiac MRE. A specialized direct shaking cardiac MRE setup and MRI protocol were designed. Stiffness was measured at 15 cardiac phases. A single midventricular slice was acquired, and intrasession variability was measured. A direct inversion of the Helmholtz equation was used to calculate the stiffness from MRE images. RESULTS: In the healthy rat, the early systolic stiffness was 2.90 kPa. The stiffness increased to the end systole (3.81 kPa), followed by a reduction during diastole to 2.61 kPa. The intrasession correlation was ρ = 0.88 (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates the feasibility of cardiac MRE in rats. Our results confirm that cardiac stiffness increases from early systole to end systole, followed by a decrease in diastole.
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Smith et al. (2025) studied this question.
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