High resolution cine displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) at 3T with navigator feedback for quantification of cardiac mechanics

Background Measures of cardiac mechanics such as myocardial wall strain are better predictors of outcomes in patients with heart disease compared to traditional clinical measures and ejection fraction. Cine displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) is an ideal method for quantifying cardiac motion which encodes tissue displacement in the phase of the MR signal and provides pixellevel resolution for quantifying cardiac mechanics. To date, DENSE has been implemented with resolution limited to 2-3 pixels across the myocardium. While this resolution is higher than most other techniques for quantifying cardiac mechanics, it may limit the ability of DENSE to quantify finer details such as transmural strains (subendocardial, midmyocardial and subepicardial) and right ventricular mechanics. We hypothesized that it is possible to efficiently increase the resolution of DENSE by a factor of 4 utilizing a navigator feedback system.