Abstract
Myocardial microcirculation dysfunction is the most potent predictor of adverse cardiovascular events in hypertension. The current study aimed to apply intravoxel incoherent motion diffusion-weighted imaging (IVIM-DWI) to assess hypertension-related microcirculation dysfunction. In this prospective study, 102 participants were recruited from our hospital and underwent cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) examination on a 3T scanning system. Hypertensive patients were divided into 3 subgroups based on blood pressure (BP) types. Two experienced CMR radiologists independently analyzed all images, and Bland-Altman analysis was applied to assess intra- and inter-observer reproducibility. Cardiac function indexes and IVIM-DWI parameters were compared between the hypertension and healthy control groups, as well as among the three hypertension subgroups. Totally 62 participants with hypertension and 27 healthy controls were included. 13 participants were excluded for poor quality of IVIM-DWI images. Significantly higher maximal left ventricular wall thickness (10.3±2.0 vs. 8.6±1.4 mm, P<0.001) and left ventricular mass index (49.0±9.1 vs. 42.1±7.5 g/m2, P<0.05) were observed inhypertension group compared with healthy control group. There were significant statistical differences in pseudo diffusion (D*) between them (81.3±16.3 vs. 111.8±18.9 mm2/s, P<0.001), as well as among the three hypertension subgroups (99.4±13.9 vs. 79.7±10.6 vs. 67.1±6.6 mm2/s, P<0.001). Participants with poor quality of IVIM-DWI images had higher heart rates (72.2±10.0 vs. 62.0±8.1 bpm, P<0.001). IVIM-DWI is feasible for quantitatively evaluating myocardial microcirculation dysfunction in hypertension. The D* parameter has a potential value for assessing the severity of microcirculation dysfunction in different BP categories.
Published Version
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