Motivation: Papillary muscle infarction (PMI) diagnosis is challenging because gold standard bright-blood MRI provides a poor contrast between damaged tissue and blood pool. Recent black-blood imaging overcomes this limitation by improving the scar-to-blood contrast. Goal(s): To develop a co-registered joint bright- and black-blood technology (SPOT) to improve visual PMI detection, while allowing an automated PMI detection algorithm (auto-PMI). Approach: 198 patients were imaged using both sequences. Number of patients with PMI were compared by two radiologists. Auto-PMI used SPOT images to detect PMI. Sensitivity was reported. Results: Radiologists detected significantly more PMI with SPOT. SPOT and auto-PMI outperformed the reference bright-blood sensitivity. Impact: As PMI is a key information for the prognosis of patients suffering from acute coronary syndrome such as myocardial infarction, improving the precision of its diagnosis using SPOT is crucial for better patient care.
Richard et al. (Tue,) studied this question.