Assessing Myocardial Disease Using T1ρ MRI.

There is great interest to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for non-invasive assessment of myocardial disease in ischemic and non-ischemic cardiomyopathies. Recently, there has been a renewed interest to use a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique utilizing spin locking radiofrequency (RF) pulses, called T1ρ MRI. The spin locking RF pulse creates sensitivity to some mechanisms of nuclear relaxation such as 1H exchange between water and amide, amine and hydroxyl functional groups in molecules; consequently, there is the potential to non-invasively, and without exogenous contrast agents, obtain important molecular information from diseased myocardial tissue. The purpose of this article is to review and critically examine the recent published literature in the field related to T1ρ MRI of myocardial disease.