The Johns Hopkins University

Whiting School of Engineering

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Techniques for cardiac tissue characterization using magnetic resonance imaging

A Dissertation Defense by

El-Sayed Ibrahim

Graduate Research Assistant

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Abstract:

Characterization of different cardiac tissues is cardiac tissues is important for therapeutic decision making in patients with heart disease. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is playing more significant role in cardiac imaging, and different MRI pulse sequences have been developed to enable functional and viability imaging of the heart. Strain-encoding (SENC) imaging is an MRI technique that has been successfully developed and implemented for myocardial functional imaging. In the proposed work, the SENC technique was modified to allow for simultaneous imaging of myocardial function and viability without increasing the scan time. The resulting images suppressed the blood signal and with further post processing, were used to identify divergent heart tissues. Other SENC modifications were implemented to increase the accuracy of the resulting images, shorten scan time, or facilitate the scan procedure. The accuracy of the SENC images was increased by taking the heart through-plane motion into consideration, and real-time SENC imaging was enabled by shortening the scan time to one heartbeat. Other modifications enabled free-breathing high-resolution SENC imaging. The proposed techniques are not limited to SENC imaging: a new technique was proposed to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the tagged balanced steady-state free precession (bSSFP) images, which enables better access to the late cardiac phases.

Monday, October 29, 2007

2:00 p.m.

Barton Hall 320

FOR DISABILITY INFORMATION

CONTACT: Candace Abel (410) 516-7031 cabel@jhu.edu