The Patho-Physiological Sensitivity of Cardiac MR Elastography: Preliminary Results.

Thomas Elgeti¹, Mark Beling², Dieter Klatt¹, Sebastian Papazoglou¹, Sebastian Hirsch¹, Kerstin Riek¹, Bernd Hamm¹, Jrgen Braun³, Ingolf Sack¹

MR Elastography (MRE) is capable to directly measure tissue stiffness. This is particularly interesting for cardiac applications, since the cardiac shear modulus changes over the cardiac cycle. It is known, that increasing myocardial stiffness yields decrease of wave amplitudes in MRE. Therefore, left ventricular shear wave amplitudes were measured in 11 healthy volunteers and 11 patients with relaxation abnormalities. It is observed, that shear wave amplitudes are significantly lower in the left ventricle of patients. This result indicates the sensitivity of amplitude-based cardiac MRE to identify increased myocardial stiffness.