Kelvin Chow1, Jessica Scott2, Ben Esch2, Mark Haykowsky3, Richard Thompson1, Ian Paterson4
1Biomedical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; 2Cardiovascular Physiology and Rehabilitation Laboratory, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada; 3Physical Therapy, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; 4Division of Cardiology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Quantitative pulmonary edema measurements were made in healthy subjects and heart failure patients at 1.5T using a free-breathing HASTE sequence with B1-field correction. Spatial distribution of the B1-field was found to have a significant effect on water density measurements (10% underestimation within the left lung), with an average corrected lung water density of 232% in healthy subjects and 16% to 37% in heart failure patients. In patients, MRI-derived lung water correlated well with invasively measured left ventricular end-diastolic pressure (R2=0.77) (elevated LVEDP is the primary cause of cardiogenic pulmonary edema) and blood serum b-type natriuretic peptide (BNP) (R2 = 0.75).