Feasibility of free-breathing diffusion tensor imaging in porcine acute myocardial infarction model

Background In vivo DT-MRI is challenging because the motion of the heart and respiration influence the parameters of diffusion tensor imaging, and the most of in vivo DT-MRI is performed under breath-hold. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of in vivo DT-MRI without breath-hold with regard to changes in direction-dependent water diffusivity reflecting alterations in tissue integrity such as apparent diffusion coefficients (ADC), fractional anisotropy (FA), and fiber length.