Jia Zhong1,2, Xin Yu1,2
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA; 2Case Center for Imaging Research, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
Displacement Encoding with Stimulated Echoes (DENSE) allows noninvasive quantification of regional cardiac function by encoding myocardial displacements directly in the phase images of its stimulated echo. However, the low SNR remains a challenge for multi-phase DENSE in mouse hearts. In addition, the need for accurate 2D phase unwrapping hinders the automatic and direct quantification of Lagrangian strains. In the current study, we developed a 2D multi-phase DENSE method with direct Lagrangian strain quantification and validated it by MR tagging. The proposed method showed feasibility in delineating cardiac function over the entire cardiac cycle with high temporal and spatial resolution.