Diffusion MR tractography of the heart
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BioMed Central
Open Access
Review
Diffusion MR tractography of the heart David E Sosnovik*1,2,3,4, Ruopeng Wang1, Guangping Dai1, Timothy G Reese1 and Van J Wedeen1,4 Address: 1Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston MA, USA, 2Cardiology Division, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston MA, USA, 3Center for Molecular Imaging Research, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston MA, USA and 4Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge MA, USA Email: David E Sosnovik* - [email protected]; Ruopeng Wang - [email protected]; Guangping Dai - [email protected]; Timothy G Reese - [email protected]; Van J Wedeen - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 13 November 2009 Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance 2009, 11:47
doi:10.1186/1532-429X-11-47
Received: 1 August 2009 Accepted: 13 November 2009
This article is available from: http://www.jcmr-online.com/content/11/1/47 © 2009 Sosnovik et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Histological studies have shown that the myocardium consists of an array of crossing helical fiber tracts. Changes in myocardial fiber architecture occur in ischemic heart disease and heart failure, and can be imaged non-destructively with diffusion-encoded MR. Several diffusion-encoding schemes have been developed, ranging from scalar measurements of mean diffusivity to a 6dimensional imaging technique known as diffusion spectrum imaging or DSI. The properties of DSI make it particularly suited to the generation of 3-dimensional tractograms of myofiber architecture. In this article we review the physical basis of diffusion-tractography in the myocardium and the attributes of the available techniques, placing particular emphasis on DSI. The application of DSI in ischemic heart disease is reviewed, and the requisites for widespread clinical translation of diffusion MR tractography in the heart are discussed.
Introduction The myocardium can be studied at several spatial scales. New techniques, such as molecular imaging, are providing important insights into cardiac disease at the cellular and subcellular levels [1-3]. At the other end of the spectrum, parameters of regional and whole organ function such as ejection fraction, perfusion, viability and strain are now routinely used in clinical practice [4,5]. The microstructural organization of the myocardium, however, has been less extensively studied, although changes at this scale could provide important biological insights and a mechanism linking cellular and whole-organ pathology [6-8]. Here we describe our initial ex-vivo experience with a relatively new magnetic resonance (MR) technique,
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