TY  - JOUR
A1  - Petritsch, Bernhard
A1  - Köstler, Herbert
A1  - Gassenmaier, Tobias
A1  - Kunz, Andreas S
A1  - Bley, Thorsten A
A1  - Horn, Michael
T1  - An investigation into potential gender-specific differences in myocardial triglyceride content assessed by \(^{1}\)H-Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy at 3Tesla
JF  - Journal of International Medical Research
N2  - Objective:
Over the past decade, myocardial triglyceride content has become an accepted biomarker for chronic metabolic and cardiac disease. The purpose of this study was to use proton (hydrogen 1)-magnetic resonance spectroscopy (\(^{1}\)H-MRS) at 3Tesla (3 T) field strength to assess potential gender-related differences in myocardial triglyceride content in healthy individuals.

Methods:
Cardiac MR imaging was performed to enable accurate voxel placement and obtain functional and morphological information. Double triggered (i.e., ECG and respiratory motion gating) \(^{1}\)H-MRS was used to quantify myocardial triglyceride levels for each gender. Two-sample t-test and Mann-Whitney U-test were used for statistical analyses.

Results:
In total, 40 healthy volunteers (22 male, 18 female; aged >18 years and age matched) were included in the study. Median myocardial triglyceride content was 0.28% (interquartile range [IQR] 0.17–0.42%) in male and 0.24% (IQR 0.14–0.45%) in female participants, and no statistically significant difference was observed between the genders. Furthermore, no gender-specific difference in ejection fraction was observed, although on average, male participants presented with a higher mean ± SD left ventricular mass (136.3 ± 25.2 g) than female participants (103.9 ± 16.1 g).

Conclusions:
The study showed that \(^{1}\)H-MRS is a capable, noninvasive tool for acquisition of myocardial triglyceride metabolites. Myocardial triglyceride concentration was shown to be unrelated to gender in this group of healthy volunteers.
KW  - cardiac
KW  - magnetic resonance imaging
KW  - 1H-Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS)
KW  - myocardium
KW  - triglycerides
KW  - metabolism
KW  - gender
Y1  - 2016
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-168808
VL  - 44
IS  - 3
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Tran-Gia, Johannes
A1  - Wech, Tobias
A1  - Bley, Thorsten
A1  - Köstler, Herbert
T1  - Model-Based Acceleration of Look-Locker T1 Mapping
JF  - PLoS One
N2  - Mapping the longitudinal relaxation time \(T_1\) has widespread applications in clinical MRI as it promises a quantitative comparison of tissue properties across subjects and scanners. Due to the long scan times of conventional methods, however, the use of quantitative MRI in clinical routine is still very limited. In this work, an acceleration of Inversion-Recovery Look-Locker (IR-LL) \(T_1\) mapping is presented. A model-based algorithm is used to iteratively enforce an exponential relaxation model to a highly undersampled radially acquired IR-LL dataset obtained after the application of a single global inversion pulse. Using the proposed technique, a \(T_1\) map of a single slice with 1.6mm in-plane resolution and 4mm slice thickness can be reconstructed from data acquired in only 6s. A time-consuming segmented IR experiment was used as gold standard for \(T_1\) mapping in this work. In the subsequent validation study, the model-based reconstruction of a single-inversion IR-LL dataset exhibited a \(T_1\) difference of less than 2.6% compared to the segmented IR-LL reference in a phantom consisting of vials with \(T_1\) values between 200ms and 3000ms. In vivo, the \(T_1\) difference was smaller than 5.5% in WM and GM of seven healthy volunteers. Additionally, the \(T_1\) values are comparable to standard literature values. Despite the high acceleration, all model-based reconstructions were of a visual quality comparable to fully sampled references. Finally, the reproducibility of the \(T_1\) mapping method was demonstrated in repeated acquisitions. In conclusion, the presented approach represents a promising way for fast and accurate \(T_1\) mapping using radial IR-LL acquisitions without the need of any segmentation.
KW  - algorithms
KW  - cerebrospinal fluid
KW  - NMR relaxation
KW  - data acquisition
KW  - relaxation (physics)
KW  - relaxation time
KW  - central nervous system
KW  - magnetic resonance imaging
Y1  - 2015
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-126436
VL  - 10
IS  - 4
ER  -