Quantitative breath-hold monitoring of myocardial gadolinium enhancement using inversion recovery TrueFISP.

The purpose of this work was to develop and evaluate the accuracy of a breath-hold IR-TrueFISP acquisition capable of monitoring gadolinium (Gd) concentrations through T1 measurements in the left ventricular blood pool and segments of the myocardium over an extended duration. Measurements using a phantom were performed to assess the accuracy of the technique. Accurate T1 measurements in the expected range after contrast agent administration were obtained with several theoretical formulations. Accurate T1 values before the administration of the contrast agent were obtained only when the incomplete recovery of magnetization during the delay time (TD) between imaging segments was incorporated into the observed signal intensity calculations. T1 measurements over a 1-hr time period were performed in four subjects with known myocardial infarctions. In this small study, Gd differences between recent and old myocardial infarctions were observed.