Evaluation of the correlation between myocardial fibrosis and ejection fraction in dilated cardiomyopathy using magnetic resonance T1 mapping.

OBJECTIVE: The study aimed to evaluate the correlation between myocardial fibrosis and ejection fraction (EF) in dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) by magnetic resonance T1 mapping. PATIENTS AND METHODS: For this study, 48 patients with DCM and 24 healthy volunteers from 2015 to 2017 were included. All participants were examined by 3.0T cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR), and T1 mapping images were obtained using the MOLLI sequence. MATLAB software was used to extract the histogram parameters of the T1 mapping images, including five groups of percentiles, kurtosis coefficient, skewness coefficient, variance, and mean. The EF value was calculated based on short-axis cine cardiac images, and a Pearson's coefficient between T1 mapping parameters and the EF value was calculated. RESULTS: The T1 mapping histogram parameters, such as the mean, variance, maximum, and 10, 25, 50, 75, and 90 percentiles of DCM patients were significantly higher than those of the controls. The differences were statistically significant (p < 0.05). The EF of DCM patients was significantly lower than that of the controls, and the difference was statistically significant (p < 0.05). The T1 mapping parameters, such as the mean, variance, maximum, and percentiles, were significantly negatively correlated with EF. CONCLUSIONS: T1 mapping is helpful in diagnosing myocardial fibrosis, particularly diffuse myocardial fibrosis in DCM, and T1 mapping parameters are significantly negatively correlated with EF.