Quantification of left ventricular volumes, mass, and ejection fraction using cine displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) MRI.

Purpose: To test the hypothesis that magnitude images from cine displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can accurately quantify left ventricular (LV) volumes, mass, and ejection fraction (EF).

Materials And Methods: Thirteen mice (C57BL/6J) were imaged using a 7T ClinScan MRI. A short-axis stack of cine T2-weighted black blood (BB) images was acquired for calculation of LV volumes, mass, and EF using the gold standard sum-of-slices methodology. DENSE images were acquired during the same imaging session in three short-axis (basal, mid, apical) and two long-axis orientations. A custom surface fitting algorithm was applied to epicardial and endocardial borders from the DENSE magnitude images to calculate volumes, mass, and EF. Agreement between the DENSE-derived measures and BB-derived measures was assessed via coefficient of variation (CoV).

Results: 3D surface reconstruction was completed on the order of seconds from segmented images, and required fewer slices to be segmented. Volumes, mass, and EF from DENSE-derived surfaces matched well with BB data (CoVs ≤11%).

Conclusion: LV mass, volumes, and EF in mice can be quantified through sparse (five slices) sampling with DENSE. This consolidation significantly reduces the time required to assess both mass/volume-based measures of cardiac function and advanced cardiac mechanics.