The overall aim of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI)/Suburban Hospital Cardiovascular MRI Research Project is to develop new approaches in assessing patients with cardiovascular disease with MRI technology. 1) Detection and characterization of acute coronary syndrome with MRI. Beyond our initial clinical studies of sensitivity and specificity for diagnosing non-ST elevation acute coronary syndrome (Kwong RY et al. Circulation 2003; 107:538-544) we have focused attention on the role of MRI methods sensitive to myocardial edema in evaluating the myocardial area at risk. This work has resulted in technical developments of bright blood T2-weighted methods that improve diagnostic certainty beyond those of commercially imaging methods. 2) Characterizing myocardial infarction and viability with MRI. We have continued to use the phase sensitive reconstruction method of imaging myocardial infarction (Kellman P et al. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 2002;47:372-383 and Kellman et al. Magn Reson Med 2004;51:408-12) and variants of the computer algorithm used to quantify these and similar images (Hsu L et al. J Magn Reson Imaging. 2006; 23(3):309-14; Hsu L et al. J Magn Reson Imaging 2006;23:315-22) in almost all of our clinical and preclinical studies. The non-rigid motion corrected imaging methods have propagated to many other applications including T2 weighted imaging and perfusion imaging. We recently validated that gadolinium based contrast agents correlate with infarct-related fibrosis at resolutions approaching a cellular level (Schelbert E et al. Circ Cardiovasc Imaging. 2010; 3(6): 743-752). 3) We have been working on improving first pass myocardial perfusion imaging through careful quantitative analysis. We have made a major advance in the analysis of absolute myocardial perfusion beyond our initial methods which were validated in sub-gram sized pieces of myocardium (Christian TF et al. Radiology 2004; 232:677-84). Most recently, we demonstrated that MR first pass perfusion images can be quantified down to a pixel level and thus in regions equivalent to about 32 microliters of myocardium (Hsu L et al. JACC CV IMaging 2012). These methods are understudy for characterizing dark rim artifacts and for diagnostic purposes. We documented issues and potential post-processing improvements to the proton density weighted images used to correct for B1 inhomogeneity (Miller CA et al. JCMR 2015). We recently improved the quality of proton density weighted images used to correct for B1 field inhomogeneity (Nielles-Vallespin et al. JCMR 2015). We have no published the ability to automatically quuantify myocardial perfusion at the pixel level and validated this in patients (Hsu 2018). 4) Characterization of myocardial abnormalities. Beyond infarction and ischemia, many disease processes alter the characteristics of myocardium. We have developed methods for separating water and fat in cardiac MR images to improve the diagnosis of arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia (Kellman P et al. Magn Reson Med. 2009;61:215-21). These techniques have a wide range of clinical applications (Kellman P et al. Curr Cardiovasc Imaging Rep. 2010; 3(2):83-91) and are the subject of a dedicated workshop sponsored by the International Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine next year. 5) Myocardial Extracellular Volume (ECV) Imaging. We have studied the extracellular volume fraction in a large number of patients over the past two years and found subtle but intriguing abnormalities in normal myocardium remote from infarcted myocardium. We have also found the ECV increases with age consistent with an age-related increase in myocardial fibrosis. Since measurements of myocardial T1 is an fundamental determinant of myocardial ECV, we have studied the accuracy and agreement of different T1 mapping methods (Nacif MS et al. J Magn Reson Imaging. Electronically published 2011 Sep 23). These methods have achieved widespread utilization. Guidelines have been published to help disseminate these methods widely.

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20
Fiscal Year
2018
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U.S. National Heart Lung and Blood Inst
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Rief, Matthias; Chen, Marcus Y; Vavere, Andrea L et al. (2018) Coronary Artery Disease: Analysis of Diagnostic Performance of CT Perfusion and MR Perfusion Imaging in Comparison with Quantitative Coronary Angiography and SPECT-Multicenter Prospective Trial. Radiology 286:461-470
Cui, Chen; Wang, Shuli; Lu, Minjie et al. (2018) Detection of Recent Myocardial Infarction Using Native T1 Mapping in a Swine Model: A Validation Study. Sci Rep 8:7391
Khalique, Zohya; Ferreira, Pedro F; Scott, Andrew D et al. (2018) Deranged Myocyte Microstructure in Situs Inversus Totalis Demonstrated by Diffusion Tensor Cardiac Magnetic Resonance. JACC Cardiovasc Imaging 11:1360-1362
Bulluck, Heerajnarain; Dharmakumar, Rohan; Arai, Andrew E et al. (2018) Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance in Acute ST-Segment-Elevation Myocardial Infarction: Recent Advances, Controversies, and Future Directions. Circulation 137:1949-1964
Ta, Allison D; Hsu, Li-Yueh; Conn, Hannah M et al. (2018) Fully quantitative pixel-wise analysis of cardiovascular magnetic resonance perfusion improves discrimination of dark rim artifact from perfusion defects associated with epicardial coronary stenosis. J Cardiovasc Magn Reson 20:16
Arai, Andrew E (2018) Quantitative Stress Perfusion Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Improves Prognostication: Crossroads for Increased Use of This Powerful Technology. JACC Cardiovasc Imaging 11:695-696
Hsu, Li-Yueh; Jacobs, Matthew; Benovoy, Mitchel et al. (2018) Diagnostic Performance of Fully Automated Pixel-Wise Quantitative Myocardial Perfusion Imaging by Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance. JACC Cardiovasc Imaging 11:697-707
Groves, Daniel W; Klion, Amy D; Chen, Marcus Y et al. (2018) Swiss cheese heart. Eur Heart J 39:255-256
Druey, Kirk M; Arai, Andrew E; Parikh, Samir M (2018) Reply. J Allergy Clin Immunol 141:1540-1541
Lu, Minjie; Wang, Shuli; Sirajuddin, Arlene et al. (2018) Dynamic stress computed tomography myocardial perfusion for detecting myocardial ischemia: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Int J Cardiol 258:325-331

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