Left Atrial Scar Imaging using 3D Dixon Late Gadolinium Enhancement

Jaime L. Shaw¹, Benjamin R. Knowles¹, Warren J. Manning¹, Dana C. Peters¹

Left atrial (LA) scar imaging using late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) is important for the assessment of post-ablation injury, fibrosis, and pre-ablation arrhythmic substrate. Common fat-saturation techniques for LGE do not always provide complete fat suppression, particularly visceral fat, and require a centric view-ordering scheme, causing misleading enhancement which may be misidentified as scar. In this study, a Dixon technique is applied to LA LGE imaging for the purpose of providing excellent fat-saturation and sequential view-ordering. Results indicate the proposed Dixon LGE technique is a highly promising method for LA scar imaging with reduced enhancement artifacts.