1015 Quantitative assessment of the dark rim artifact in first pass perfusion images: effect of stress and rest

Abstract

Dark Rim Artifact (DRA) in Gadolinium enhanced saturation recovery TrueFISP cardiac first pass perfusion images from normal volunteers collected during stress and rest, show similar frequency affecting 12.5% of the rest and 10.2% of stress images, with comparable severity represented by signal loss of 32.9 % (rest) and 31.5 % (stress) in the endocardium. The duration and severity of the DRA coincides with the maximum contrast agent concentration and susceptibility difference between LV and myocardium. A comparison of three pulse sequences shows that TrueFISP is most affected by the DRA, followed by TFL while EPI shows no artifact.