Choukri Mekkaoui1, Sonia Nielles-Vallespin2, Peter Gatehouse2, Marcel P. Jackowski3, David Firmin2, David E. Sosnovik
1Radiology, Harvard Medical School - Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; 2Royal Brompton Hospital; 3University of So Paulo
Diffusion Tensor MRI (DTI) of the heart in vivo is complicated significantly by cardiac motion. Here, for the first time, we perform DTI tractography of the human heart in vivo without the need for image interpolation or transformation. Myofiber tracts were derived from 3D in vivo DTI datasets obtained at end-diastole and end-systole. We show, for the first time, that robust in vivo tractograms of the human heart can be derived with a scan duration of less than 20 minutes. In addition, we show that myofiber orientation in the subepicardium increases in obliquity during systole as the myocardium contracts.