End-systolic myocardial T1 mapping using a spoiled steady-state approach: Towards reducing the confounding effect of intra-myocardial blood on native T1

Recent results in myocardial tissue characterization using cardiac MRI have shown that native myocardial T1 values are confounded by intra-myocardial water content, mainly driven by intra-myocardial blood volume. We developed and tested a free-breathing T1 mapping method that, in contrast to MOLLI-based methods, avoids any magnetization preparation and therefore can achieve significantly higher temporal resolution, thereby enabling it to capture purely-systolic or purely-diastolic T1 maps. End-systolic T1 mapping using the proposed steady-state approach has the potential to generate native T1 maps with minimal confounding effect from intra-myocardial blood.