New Non-invasive Imaging Methods For Biomedical Applicat

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In the last year we focused our effot and made progress in the area of quantitative contractile function assessment of the human heart in vivo. Based on the stimulated-echo phase contrast method DENSE, which was proposed for micro-imaging and applied successfully in the human heart by our group,we optimized the technique for single breath-hold in vivo application in patients. Using a state-of-the-art 1.5 tesla whole-body clinical scanner, the technology is now able to quantify the motion of the entire left ventricular wall in three-dimensional space in a breath-hold of 15 heartbeats. For other cardiac MRI exams that need more than a breath-hold, we developed a motion-navigator technique that tracks the actual position of the heart from beat to beat, with improved reliability for individual patients than diaphragm based methods. With this method, many exams can be reliably performed under normal breathing condition. We also demonstrated a novel vectorized motion imaging method that may have interesting applications in small animal MRI.