Yu-Xiang Ye1, Martina Sauter2, Thomas C. Basse-Lsebrink1, Thomas Kampf1, Xavier Helluy1, 3, Karl-Heinz Hiller3, Ali Yilmaz4, Udo Sechtem4, Wolfgang R. Bauer5, Reinhard Kandolf2, Karin Klingel2, Peter M. Jakob1, 3
1Dept. Experimental Physics V, University of Wrzburg, Wrzburg, Bavaria, Germany; 2Dept. Molecular Pathology, University Hospital Tbingen, Tbingen, Germany; 3Research Center for Magnetic Resonance Bavaria, Wrzburg, Bavaria, Germany; 4Division of Cardiology, Robert-Bosch-Krankenhaus, Stuttgart, Germany; 5Dept. Internal medicine I, University hospitals Wrzburg, Wrzburg, Bavaria, Germany
The gold standard to diagnose myocarditis is histopathology and immunohistochemistry to define cardiac injury and inflammatory cells in the myocardium within endomyocardial biopsies. However, this invasive procedure is often insensitive to detect myocarditis. In this study, fluorine-19 (19F) cellular MRI was applied to non-invasively visualize inflammation of viral myocarditis in a mouse model in vivo. This method might be clinically translational to assist early diagnosis of viral myocarditis and might be valuable to improve the management of patients suffering from acute and chronic viral myocarditis by localization and quantification of macrophage infiltrates, also in follow up studies.