Assessment of cardiac RF ablation lesions by DCE-MRI

Abstract

Radiofrequency (RF) ablation of myocardial tissue is a clinically acceptable therapy for atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia. LGE-MRI has been used to assess immediately post-ablation RF lesions. It was shown that appearance of acute lesions in LGE-MRI changes with time after contrast injection [1,2]. Dickfeld, et al. [1] studied ventricular RF lesions delivered epicardially. They have shown that lesion core corresponds to regions of no-reflow with enhancement only at the boundaries in early LGE. Enhancement was shown to propagate inside lesion core in late LGE scans. Whereas, presence of con- siderable enhancement in regions of edema surrounding the no-reflow core of acute atrial lesions was shown in [2]. This obvious difference between these works was investigated and correspondence between acute no-reflow and 3 months post ablation scar was studied.