Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Evaluating the Heart Function: State-of-the-Art Techniques

Abstract:          

The cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death worldwide with huge associated cost for prevention and treatment. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), with its unprecedented capabilities, provides valuable measures about the heart function. These measures, especially those of regional cardiac function, allow for early intervention and efficient treatment planning in CVD patients. Different MRI techniques have been developed over the past 25 years to measure the heart function, including myocardial tagging, harmonic-phase (HARP) analysis, displacementencoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE), strain-encoding (SENC), tissue phase mapping (TPM), feature tracking cine imaging, and magnetic resonance elastography (MRE). These advanced techniques resulted in different types of MRI images that need special postprocessing to efficiently extract accurate and meaningful information about the heart function, especially that each technique has its own advantages and limitations. The tutorial summarizes the efforts I spent in the past 5 years, writing a book about this topic (https://www.crcpress.com/Heart-Mechanics-Magnetic- Resonance-Imaging–The-Complete-Guide/Ibrahim/9781466512221), with contributions from world experts who will be presenting in this tutorial. The tutorial is divided into eight 25-mintes presentations (20 minutes for the presentation and 5 minutes for panel discussion), each focusing on one category of the aforementioned imaging techniques. The first presentation provides an overview of the whole tutorial, including historical background and introduction to the techniques covered in the tutorial. Each of the following six presentations covers the basic principles of the imaging techniques, techniques’ implementation, techniques’ advantages and limitations, and technical challenges. The last presentation focuses on clinical applications, current technical challenges, and future development trends. By the end of every 4 sessions, there will be a 10-minute break to meet with the speakers for one-on-one friendly discussions. By the end of this tutorial, the audience will obtain comprehensive and up-to-date knowledge about state-of-the-art MRI techniques for evaluating the heart function and mechanical properties.

List of Speakers (tentative)

El-Sayed Ibrahim, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA (elsayei@umich.edu
Title of the presentation: MRI for Evaluating the Heart Function: Past, Present, and Future

Choukri Mekkaoui, Harvard University, Boston, USA (mekkaoui@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu)
Title of the presentation: The Heart Structure-Function Relationship

Andreas Schuster, Universitätsmedizin Göttingen, Germany (andreas_schuster@gmx.net)
Title of the presentation: Cardiac Cine Image Analysis

Dimitri Metaxas, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA (dnm@cs.rutgers.edu) & Prof. Amir Amini, University of Louisville, Kentucky, USA (amir.amini@louisville.edu)
Title of the presentation: Myocardial Tagged Image Analysis

Ahmed Fahmy, Nile University, Cairo, Egypt (fahmy@k-space.org)
Title of the presentation:  Harmonic Phase Analysis and Strain Encoding

El-Sayed Ibrahim, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA (elsayei@umich.edu)
Title of the presentation:  Displacement- and Velocity Encoding Cardiac MR Imaging

Ralph Sinkus, King’s College London, London, UK (ralph.sinkus@kcl.ac.uk) & Prof. Arunark Kolipaka, Ohio State University, Columbus, USA (arunark.kolipaka@osumc.edu)
Title of the presentation:  MR Elastography in the Heart

Frederick Epstein, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA (fhe6b@virginia.edu) & Prof. Kan Hor, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Cincinnati, USA (kan.hor@cchmc.org)
Title of the presentation:  Clinical Applications and Future Trends in Cardiac Function Assessment by MRI

Organizer I:      El-Sayed H. Ibrahim – IEEE Member
Bio:  Dr. Ibrahim is an Assistant Professor in Radiology at University of Michigan in USA. He received the Master and PhD degrees from Johns Hopkins University. He is a world expert on cardiovascular imaging, especially with MRI. He is the author of a key book on imaging the heart function using MRI, besides about 50 peer-reviewed papers, mostly on cardiac imaging.