Cardiac Strain Analysis Using Cine Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Computed Tomography

Abstract

Using tagged cine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to analyze myocardial strain provides direct information regarding the timing of onset and peak of myocardial contraction and al- lows for the evaluation of regional function and mechanical dyssynchrony. Cardiac MRI lacks the disadvantages of acoustic windows and a narrow field of view, with the advantage of measuring right ventricular strain and the geometric difference in left ventricular contraction. Previous studies using tagged MRI demonstrated that a contraction delay between the right and left ventricles correlated with right ventricular dysfunction in adults with congenital heart disease and pulmonary hypertension, and that spatial dyssynchrony was associated with a re- duction in cardiac sympathetic activity in non-ischemic heart failure. Recently, cardiac com- puted tomography (CT) was also found to enable the quantitative assessment of two-dimen- sional and three-dimensional myocardial strain. This review focuses on strain analysis using tagged MRI and its current post-processing methods, known as feature tracking, discusses upcoming CT-based methods of strain analysis, and introduces their clinical applications.