Non-selective double inversion recovery pre-pulse for flow-independent black blood myocardial viability imaging

Introduction & Purpose: MRI late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) using the inversion-recovery (IR) sequence is the current gold standard for the assessment of myocardial viability. Although it achieves high contrast between infarct and normal myocardium, there is often poor infarct-to-blood contrast. Flow-dependent and diffusion-prepared black-blood LGE techniques have previously been described. The use of multiple inversion delays to achieve signal suppression has been previously studied, either to achieve simultaneous nulling of the signals of two species with different T1 times 4) or for total suppression from tissues with different T1 times. 6) Recently this principle was extended to T1-independent flow suppression in carotid plaque imaging. We sought to improve infarct-to-blood contrast in LGE myocardial viability imaging using a novel non-selective double inversion technique that provides flow-independent signal suppression over a wide user-defined T1-range. This approach allows simultaneous nulling of signal from both the blood and normal myocardium while maintaining high signal in the infarcted region.