Grants and Contracts Details
Description
The 2-year event free survival rate of patients with myocardial fibrosis, as identified following
intravenous (IV) infusion of the contrast agent gadolinium with delayed contrast enhanced
(DCE)–MRI (1), is approximately 50% (19) (Fig 1). Myocardial fibrosis can be spatially variable
at low densities (termed diffuse fibrosis), or spatially focalized at high densities (termed dense
fibrosis), often transitioning from diffuse to dense states as part of disease progression. The
sensitivity of DCE-MRI limits detection to dense fibrosis, obstructing a large window for potential
therapeutic intervention (22). Recently, we developed a contrast agent free MRI method that
uses MTC from collagen to image myocardial fibrosis, as well as software to quantify the degree
of fibrosis from MTC-MR images. The proposed research seeks to validate this technique in
preclinical imaging of diabetes induced diffuse myocardial fibrosis, and in translational imaging
of fibrosis in patients. Completion of this work will significantly improve patient care by enabling
noninvasive and early diagnosis of myocardial fibrosis, and by enabling expedited translational
development of novel anti-fibrotic therapies (24, 25).
I. HYPOTHESES
1) MTC-MRI enables detection of myocardial fibrosis in a mouse model of diabetes, and can
provide an early predictor of fibrosis induced contractile dysfunction.
2) Automated assessment of fibrosis in the human heart with MTC-MRI agrees with DCE-MRI.
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 6/1/11 → 2/28/15 |
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