King Kenneth Cheung1, Anthony Neil Price2, Roger J. Ordidge1, Mark Francis Lythgoe2
1Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering, University College London (UCL), London, UK; 2Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging (CABI), Department of Medicine and Institute of Child Health, UCL, London, UK
Delayed-enhancement (DE)-MRI is a well-established method for assessing in vivo infarct size in chronic and sub-chronic myocardial infarction (MI); however its application in small animal models has been limited to sub-optimal MR sequences, and its accuracy in the hyper-acute phase (i.e. hours) of MI remains ill-defined. This abstract describes a validation of inversion recovery DE-MRI for measuring infarct size during the hyper-acute phase of MI in rats. Our results demonstrate excellent agreement between DE-MRI and TTC staining. DE-MRI can offer accurate infarct measurement at the hyper-acute phase of MI, which may serve as a valuable early marker for prognostic predictions and assessment of therapeutic outcome.