Joep van Oorschot1,
Mohammed Kaplan2, Marc Baldus2, Peter R. Luijten1,
Jaco J.M. Zwanenburg1
1Radiology,
UMC Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands; 2Bijvoet Center, Utrecht
University, Utrecht, Netherlands
After myocardial infarction (MI) scarring fibrosis is formed. In this study T1, T2 and T1ρ were studied with HRMAS spectroscopy after myocardial infarction. Two weeks after occlusion of the left coronary artery of a landrace pig, two tissue samples were extracted from infarcted and healthy heart muscle tissue. The medium T2 component (~30ms) was significantly higher in infarcted tissue, which can be explained by cell death after MI. For higher spin lock frequencies (>500 Hz), T1ρ was significantly higher in infarcted tissue. This suggests that a T1ρ-weighted sequence with high spin-lock field is promising for endogenous detection of myocardial fibrosis.