Simulations of cardiac electrophysiology and mechanics have been reported to be sensitive to the microstructural anisotropy of the myocardium. Consequently, a personalized representation of cardiac microstructure is a crucial component of accurate, personalized cardiac biomechanical models. cardiac Diffusion Tensor Imaging (cDTI) is a non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging technique capable of probing the heart's microstructure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Prolonged ischemia and myocardial infarction are followed by a series of dynamic processes that determine the fate of the affected myocardium toward recovery or necrosis. Metabolic adaptions are considered to play a vital role in the recovery of salvageable myocardium in the context of stunned and hibernating myocardium.
Objectives: The potential of hyperpolarized pyruvate cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) alongside functional and parametric CMR as a tool to study the complex metabolic-structural interplay in a longitudinal study of chronic myocardial infarction in an experimental pig model is investigated.
JACC Cardiovasc Imaging
February 2023
Background: Adverse LV remodeling post-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) is associated with a poor prognosis, but the underlying mechanisms are not fully understood. Diffusion tensor (DT)-cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) allows in vivo characterization of myocardial architecture and provides unique mechanistic insight into pathophysiologic changes following myocardial infarction.
Objectives: This study evaluated the potential associations between DT-CMR performed soon after STEMI and long-term adverse left ventricular (LV) remodeling following STEMI.
Aortic insufficiency caused by paravalvular leakage (PVL) is one of the most feared complications following transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVI) in patients. Domestic pigs () are a popular large animal model to study such conditions and develop novel diagnostic and therapeutic techniques. However, the models based on prosthetic valve implantation are time intensive, costly, and often hamper further hemodynamic measurements such as PV loop and 4D MRI flow by causing implantation-related wall motion abnormalities and degradation of MR image quality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging is the gold standard for the non-invasive assessment of left-ventricular (LV) function. Prognostic value of deformation metrics extracted directly from regular SSFP CMR images has been shown by numerous studies in the clinical setting, but with some limitations to detect torsion of the myocardium. Tagged CMR introduces trackable features in the myocardium that allow for the assessment of local myocardial deformation, including torsion; it is, however, limited in the quantification of radial strain, which is a decisive metric for assessing the contractility of the heart.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Very high gradient amplitudes played out over extended time intervals as required for second-order motion-compensated cardiac DTI may violate the assumption of a linear time-invariant gradient system model. The aim of this work was to characterize diffusion gradient-related system nonlinearity and propose a correction approach for echo-planar and spiral spin-echo motion-compensated cardiac DTI.
Methods: Diffusion gradient-induced eddy currents of 9 diffusion directions were characterized at b values of 150 s/mm and 450 s/mm for a 1.
Aims: Myocardial involvement is common in patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc) and causes myocardial fibrosis and subtle ventricular dysfunction. However, the temporal onset of myocardial involvement during the progression of the disease and its prognostic value are yet unknown. We used cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) to investigate subclinical functional impairment and diffuse myocardial fibrosis in patients with very early diagnosis of SSc (VEDOSS) and established SSc and examined whether this was associated with mortality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCardiac diffusion tensor imaging (cDTI) provides invaluable information about the state of myocardial microstructure. For further clinical dissemination, free-breathing acquisitions are desired, which however require image registration prior to tensor estimation. Due to the varying contrast and the intrinsically low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), registration is very challenging and thus can introduce additional errors in the tensor estimation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe propose a differentiable volumetric mesh voxelization technique based on deformation of a shape-model, and demonstrate that it can be used to predict left-ventricular anatomies directly from magnetic resonance image slice data. The predicted anatomies are volumetric meshes suitable for direct inclusion in biophysical simulations. The proposed method can leverage existing (pixel-based) segmentation networks, and does not require any ground truth paired image and mesh training data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCardiac diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is an emerging technique for the in vivo characterisation of myocardial microstructure, and there is a growing need for its validation and standardisation. We sought to establish the accuracy, precision, repeatability and reproducibility of state-of-the-art pulse sequences for cardiac DTI among 10 centres internationally. Phantoms comprising 0%-20% polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) were scanned with DTI using a product pulsed gradient spin echo (PGSE; N = 10 sites) sequence, and a custom motion-compensated spin echo (SE; N = 5) or stimulated echo acquisition mode (STEAM; N = 5) sequence suitable for cardiac DTI in vivo.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCardiac electrophysiology and cardiac mechanics both depend on the average cardiomyocyte long-axis orientation. In the realm of personalized medicine, knowledge of the patient-specific changes in cardiac microstructure plays a crucial role. Patient-specific computational modelling has emerged as a tool to better understand disease progression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDomestic pigs are widely used in cardiovascular research as the porcine circulatory system bears a remarkable resemblance to that of humans. In order to reduce variability, only clinically healthy animals enter the study as their health status is assessed in entry examination. Like humans, pigs can also suffer from congenital heart disease, such as an atrial septal defect (ASD), which often remains undetected.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) allows quantifying myocardial tissue deformation and strain based on the tagging principle. In this work, we investigate accuracy and precision of strain quantification from synthetic 3D tagged MRI using equilibrated warping. To this end, synthetic biomechanical left-ventricular tagged MRI data with varying tag distance, spatial resolution and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) were generated and processed to quantify errors in radial, circumferential and longitudinal strains relative to ground truth.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: We examined the dynamic response of the myocardium to infarction in a longitudinal porcine study using relaxometry, functional as well as diffusion cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR). We sought to compare non contrast CMR methods like relaxometry and in-vivo diffusion to contrast enhanced imaging and investigate the link of microstructural and functional changes in the acute and chronically infarcted heart.
Methods: CMR was performed on five myocardial infarction pigs and four healthy controls.
Paravalvular leakage (PVL) and eccentric aortic regurgitation remain a major clinical concern in patients receiving transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), and regurgitant volume remains the main readout parameter in clinical assessment. In this work we investigate the effect of jet origin and trajectory of mild aortic regurgitation on left ventricular hemodynamics in a porcine model. A pig model of mild aortic regurgitation/PVL was established by transcatheter piercing and dilating the non-coronary (NCC) or right coronary cusp (RCC) of the aortic valve close to the valve annulus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death and a significant contributor of health care costs. Noninvasive imaging plays an essential role in the management of patients with cardiovascular disease. Cardiac magnetic resonance (MR) can noninvasively assess heart and vascular abnormalities, including biventricular structure/function, blood hemodynamics, myocardial tissue composition, microstructure, perfusion, metabolism, coronary microvascular function, and aortic distensibility/stiffness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA major concern in personalised models of heart mechanics is the unknown zero-pressure domain, a prerequisite for accurately predicting cardiac biomechanics. As the reference configuration cannot be captured by clinical data, studies often employ in-vivo frames which are unlikely to correspond to unloaded geometries. Alternatively, zero-pressure domain is approximated through inverse methodologies, which, however, entail assumptions pertaining to boundary conditions and material parameters.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCardiac myocyte aggregate orientation has a strong impact on cardiac electrophysiology and mechanics. Studying the link between structural characteristics, strain, and stresses over the cardiac cycle and cardiac function requires a full volumetric representation of the microstructure. In this work, we exploit the structural similarity across hearts to extract a low-rank representation of predominant myocyte orientation in the left ventricle from high-resolution magnetic resonance ex-vivo cardiac diffusion tensor imaging (cDTI) in porcine hearts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) remains the commonest cause of sudden cardiac death among young athletes. Differentiating between physiologically adaptive left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy observed in athletes' hearts and pathological HCM remains challenging. By quantifying the diffusion of water molecules, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) MRI allows voxelwise characterization of myocardial microstructure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Cardiac diffusion tensor imaging using EPI readout is prone to image distortions in the presence of field inhomogeneities. In this work, a framework to analyze and correct image distortions in cardiac diffusion tensor imaging is presented.
Methods: A multi-coil reconstruction framework was implemented to enable field map-based off-resonance correction.