Using MRI for studying cardiac function in rat models of radiation-therapy is important for better understanding of cardiotoxicity. In this study, we developed an optimized cardiac functional MRI protocol for rat imaging, and investigated the effects of changing imaging parameters on cardiac measurements. The results showed that blood-to-myocardium contrast-to-noise ratio in the cine images significantly affects ejection-fraction measurements, whereas reduced resolution has less effect on ejection-fraction. However, reduced resolution in the tagged images has significant effect on strain measurements, whereas tagline density has less effect, as long as sufficient resolution is maintained and more than one tagline intersects the myocardium.
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