Methodology Overview

In PCARDM, left ventricular perfusion is quantified by the following steps:

• Loading of the dynamic perfusion series. Here it is important that the acquisition timing information is correctly interpreted, because otherwise modeling will not provide correct results.
• Interactive cropping of the heart volume from the surrounding tissue.
• Loading of the B₁ correction map (COCA) and correction of the perfusion signal (optional).
• Interactive definition of the left ventricle segments in all slices of the left ventricle.
• Interactive definition of a representative blood volume in the center of the left ventricular (LV) cavity.
• Calculation of the average MR signal curves in the LV segments and the LV cavity.
• Loading of the T₁ series and geometric interpolation to the perfusion scan (optional).
  • Calculation of the average T₁ in the LV segments and the cavity.
  • Conversion of the signal curves to contrast concentration.
  • Optional concentration curve filtering and baseline correction.
• Quantification of the segmental concentration curves by one of the available methods, using the LV cavity contrast concentration as the arterial input function. The result is a segmental perfusion value in [ml/min/g] per segment.
• Calculation of the segmental coronary perfusion reserves.
• Documentation of the outcome in comprehensive reports.
• Saving of all configurations in a protocol so that the data analysis can be exactly reproduced and examined any time later.