Comparing myocardium perfusion data acquired by a MRI-phantom and a mathematical model

Abstract

Myocardial Perfusion refers to how cardiac tissue is being supplied by nutrients and oxygen. There are several exams used to verify if myocardial perfusion is taking place properly. These exams, for instance, can verify if there are regions in the heart with ischemia (lack of oxygen and nutrients). One exam that is widely used for this purpose is contrastenhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Unfortunately, the images provided by this exam usually offers a more qualitative assessment of myocardial perfusion than a quantitative one. Different techniques that aim to better understand and quantify the information acquired by contrast-enhanced MRI have been developed. Among this techniques, a MRI-phantom device was developed in the framework of an European project. This complex hardware device enables the simulation of contrastenhanced MRI exams under controlled conditions. In this paper, we present another technique that also enables a similar quantitative analysis of this exam, a mathematical model based on Partial Differential Equations that treats cardiac tissue as a porous media. The results obtained by our mathematical model were compared to different results obtained by the MRI-Phantom. Different parameters such as Myocardial Perfusion Rates (MPR) and Cardiac Output (CO) were tested. For all the simulations we observed a good agreement between the results obtained by the mathematical model and the data obtained by the MRI-Phantom, in terms of the temporal dynamics of the contrast agent (CA). Therefore, we conclude that the presented mathematical models can be taken as promising tools for the quantification of cardiac perfusion.