ECG-gated NMR-CT for cardiovascular disease.

We have developed an ECG-gated NMR-CT, and used it with 16 patients. The saturation recovery images are not able to separate heart muscle from the blood pool, but in inversion recovery images, heart muscle can be differentiated from the ventricles. The region of myocardial infarction is revealed as wall thinning and/or wall motion abnormality. From the two-gated inversion recovery images (the end-diastole and end-systole images) we obtained, we evaluated a wall motion abnormality in the left ventricle, and calculated the ejection fraction of the left ventricle. This information was then compared with the findings of a nuclear medicine study carried out one week interval and which included 10 of the 16 patients tested with the ECG-gated NMR-CT. The wall motions in both methods are well correlated, with the exception of the inferior wall. The values of the ejection fraction in the NMR image were moderately low, but two modalities showed a satisfactory correlation (r = 0.85).