Ex vivo cardiac DTI: on the effects of diffusion time and b-value

Martijn Froeling,Valentina Mazzoli,Aart J Nederveen,Peter R Luijten,Gustav J Strijkers

doi:10.1186/1532-429x-16-s1-p77

Abstract

Background For in-vivo an ex-vivo studies of myocardial structure, generally a spin echo (SE) or stimulated echo (STE) based sequence is used. Diffusion weighting is reported with a large range of diffusion times (50 and 1000 ms). Furthermore, in-vivo studies generally use low b-values (300 s/mm) whereas ex-vivo experiments allow for much higher b-values. For interpretation of in-vivo cardiac DTI a understanding of the effects of sequence parameters on the derived diffusion parameters is needed. In this study, we therefore studied the impact of diffusion time and b-value on these parameters.

Highlights

For in-vivo an ex-vivo studies of myocardial structure, generally a spin echo (SE) or stimulated echo (STE) based sequence is used
There was a non-linear dependency of the signal on the applied b-value for all diffusion times (Figure 1E), which was more apparent for longer diffusion times
As a result the DTI parameters depended on b-value and diffusion time (Figure 1A to 1E)

Summary

Introduction

For in-vivo an ex-vivo studies of myocardial structure, generally a spin echo (SE) or stimulated echo (STE) based sequence is used. Ex vivo cardiac DTI: on the effects of diffusion time and b-value (300 s/mm2) whereas ex-vivo experiments allow for much higher b-values. For interpretation of in-vivo cardiac DTI a understanding of the effects of sequence parameters on the derived diffusion parameters is needed.

Results

Conclusion