102 THE REPRODUCIBILITY AND ANALYSIS TIME OF CARDIAC MAGNETIC RESONANCE FEATURE TRACKING: POTENTIAL FOR CLINICAL APPLICATION

Abstract

Background Myocardial strain imaging has the potential for clinical application in the detection of pre-clinical disease, stress induced myocardial dysfunction and dyssynchrony. Feature-tracking cardiovascular magnetic resonance (FT-CMR) uses routine CMR imaging (steady-state free-precession imaging) to calculate myocardial strain. View this table: Table 1 Methods Healthy volunteers (n=20, age: 42±13 years, 11 (55%) male) underwent a standard protocol CMR. Endocardial and epicardial borders were manually drawn and automatically tracked through the cardiac cycle.⇓ Figure 1 Results As shown in the Table, circumferential strain (Ecc) was the most reproducible, followed by longitudinal strain (ELL) and radial strain (Err). FT-CMR analysis time was 3±1 mins. Conclusions FT-CMR is highly reproducible within operators, particularly with respect to Ecc. This, together with a short time required for analysis, enhances the potential of this imaging modality in clinical practice.