Hsin-Jung Yang1, Damini Dey1, Jane Sykes2, John Butler2, Xiaoming Bi3, Behzad Sharif1, Sotirios Tsaftaris4, Debiao Li1, Piotr Slomka1, Frank Prato2, and Rohan Dharmakumar1
1Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States, 2Lawson Health Research Institute, london, ON, Canada, 3Siemens Healthcare, Los Angeles, CA, United States, 4IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca, Italy
Over
the past two decades myocardial BOLD MRI has seen major technical advancements
and a number of clinical validation studies. However, the reliability of BOLD
MRI still remains a key weakness for its widespread adoption for routine
clinical use due to the unpredictable motions during stress tests. We
investigated whether the unique pharmocokinetics of regadenoson, a new coronary
vasodilator that is rapidly becoming the agent of choice for cardiac stress
testing, can be used to markedly improve the reliability of myocardial BOLD
MRI. Studies were performed in a canine model and validated in a clinical PET/MR
system.