Cormac Farrelly1, Wolfgang Rehwald2, Aoife Keeling1, John Sheehan1, James Carr1
1Cardiovascular Imaging, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago, IL, USA; 2Siemens Medical Solutions, Chicago, IL, USA
Standard viability imaging are bright blood techniques and as such are limited in their evaluation of subendocardial areas of enhancement. This is because there is poor contrast between blood-pool and sub-endocardial foci of enhancement. Using a previously described dark blood technique that simultaneously nulls the blood-pool and myocardium 12 patients with subendocardial enhancement and clinical evidence of myocardial infarction and 10 patients with non-ischemic cardiomyopathy were evaluated.All patients demonstrated increased CNR between the hyper-enhancing myocardium and the blood pool on the dark blood technique compared to standard segmented TurboFLASH with acceptable preservation of CNR between hyper-enhancement and normal myocardium.This technique can be useful in a clinical setting for evaluation of infarction and non-ischemic cardiomyopathy.