New MRI Methods Applied to Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction (HFpEF)

Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is currently being studied intensely as several large trials of drug therapies have failed to benefit patients. Better characterization of these patients is important, and there are open questions regarding microvascular disease and remodeling in the HFpEF population. New MRI methods could be ideal to better characterize and understand HFpEF and its response to treatments. This project seeks to develop, evaluate and apply new MRI methods for high-end perfusion imaging. These methods will estimate endo/epi ratios across the cardiac cycle in free-breathing studies, which will provide new information about microvascular disease. This is of particular value for assessing HFpEF.

The idea of this project is to combine new techniques for quantitative cardiac perfusion MRI imaging that would be ideally suited for answering open questions regarding HFpEF and for studying microvascular disease. The methods could potentially also predict patients who might respond to particular drug therapies.

The new techniques include "simultaneous multi-slice" imaging which has not been used this way for myocardial perfusion imaging. In particular, we are developing an innovative hybrid of the standard saturation pulse and steady state spoiled gradient echo acquisitions. We also are developing a new method for using 3D "stack of stars" + 2D slice in the same scan for arterial input function assessment to quantify perfusion, and new methods for measuring T1.