Victor B. Xie1,
2, Peng Cao1, 2, Shu-Juan J. Fan1,
2, Ed X. Wu1, 2
1Laboratory
of Biomedical Imaging and Signal Processing, The University of Hong Kong,
Hong Kong SAR, China; 2Department of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
Intramyocellular lipid serves as an important source of cellular energy for heart and it is mostly stored as lipid droplets. Lipid droplet size may be a useful biomarker for cardiac diseases. In this study, distribution of IMCL droplet size was investigated by measuring ADC in different parts of heart and different layers of myocardium, then droplet size was estimated from MR diffusion signal decays acquired at two diffusion times. ADC was documented to be relatively homogeneous within myocardium. Lipid droplet size was estimated and result was in good agreement with TEM measurement.