Improved myocardial T1 mapping for patients with implanted cardiac devices

Background Myocardial T1 mapping holds promise for non-invasive evaluation of diffuse fibrosis. Nevertheless, the widely used cardiac T1 mapping techniques, including MOLLI and SASHA, are generally not applicable to patients with implanted cardiac devices, such as implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) and pacemakers, due to large off-resonance induced by the device and the associated banding artifacts when using bSSFP readouts. We sought to develop and validate an improved technique for accurate myocardial T1 mapping in patients with implanted cardiac devices.