The Next Leap in Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging:Cycling the Field

Aberdeen scientists are at the forefront of a new type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), having built in-house the only two available prototypes of Fast Field-Cycling MRI in the world - and these already have clinical imaging capabilities. Fast Field-Cycling MRI switches rapidly over a range of field strengths (0.2 T to 200 µT), providing a T1 dispersion curve. This information is invisible to fixed-field scanners and uncovers unique knowledge about motion and interaction between component molecules within a tissue (i.e. water/fat/proteins). In this application the investigators wish to use their in-house expertise further to extend the capability of our Fast Field-Cycling MRI to perform cardiac imaging by building the first-ever cardiac Fast Field-Cycling MRI coil and develop cardiac pulse sequences with ECG gating. The investigators will aim to establish the normalcy of T1 dispersion curves for left ventricular myocardium in healthy volunteers, and further on to distinguish the characteristics of post-myocardial infarction scar T1 dispersion curves.

Inclusion criteria

• Participant who is willing and able to give informed consent for participation in the study
• Healthy volunteers willing to give informed consent for participation in the study
• Patients diagnosed with a previous myocardial infarction

Exclusion criteria

• Unwillingness to participate
• Claustrophobia
• Contraindication to MRI scanning such as implantable cardiac devices
• Participants who have had a previous myocardial infarction in the past of which they may not be aware and this is discovered whilst being scanned on the 3T MRI scanner, or who may have any other cardiology condition that they were previously unaware will not be included in the healthy control group, even if they present themselves to us as "healthy" at the time of the study visit
• Pregnancy
• Body habitus that may preclude comfortable positioning of the volunteer in either of the MRI scanners (>50cm in diameter)
• Participants with abnormal kidney function that will preclude them from receiving a contrast agent