Cardiac Perfusion > Methodology Overview

Left ventricular perfusion is quantified by the following steps:

▪Loading of the dynamic perfusion series. Here it is important that the acquisition timing information is correctly interpreted, because otherwise modeling will not provide correct results.

▪Interactive cropping of the heart volume from the surrounding tissue.

▪Loading of the B1 correction map (COCA) and correction of the perfusion signal (optional).

▪Interactive definition of the left ventricle segments in all slices of the left ventricle.

▪Interactive definition of a representative blood volume in the center of the left ventricular (LV) cavity.

▪Calculation of the average MR signal curves in the LV segments and the LV cavity.

▪Loading of the T1 series and geometric interpolation to the perfusion scan (optional).

•Calculation of the average T1 in the LV segments and the cavity.

•Conversion of the signal curves to contrast concentration.

•Optional concentration curve filtering and baseline correction.

▪Quantification of the segmental concentration curves by one of the available methods, using the LV cavity contrast concentration as the arterial input function. The result is a segmental perfusion value in [ml/min/g] per segment.

▪Calculation of the segmental coronary perfusion reserves.

▪Documentation of the outcome in comprehensive reports.

▪Saving of all configurations in a protocol so that the data analysis can be exactly reproduced and examined any time later.