MRI simulation-based evaluation of ECV calculation using MOLLI T1 maps

Quantification of myocardial extracellular volume (ECV) fraction based on pre- and post-gadolinium MOLLI T1 maps is a research tool that has the potential to become an important prognostic tool for assessing specific cardiomyopathies. In this study, we utilized advanced MR simulations of the MOLLI pulse sequence for a wide range of physiological T2 values for pre-gadolinium blood and myocardium in order to investigate the dependency of MOLLI-based ECV measurements on T2. Simulations show that MOLLI underestimates ECV measurements in shorter pre-gadolinium myocardial T2 and longer pre-gadolinium blood T2 values with the ECV underestimation error being higher with pre-gadolinium myocardial T2 values than with pre-gadolinium blood T2 values. © 2015 CCAL