Assessment of segmental agreement of T2 mapping versus triple inversion recovery in detection of acute myocardial edema

Background There are some limitations using the different sequences of clinical cardiac magnetic resonance (cardiac MR) in detection of edema in patients presenting with acute myocardial injury. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the myocardial segmental agreement between the different edema sequences: T2 mapping and turbo inversion recovery magnitude (TIRM) in detection of acute myocardial edema. Results Thirty-seven patients presented with acute infarction were sent to cardiac MR to assess myocardial edema. All cardiac MR studies were scanned using cine, TIRM, and late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) in short axis views (SAX). Position of the T2 mapping slices were copied from the TIRM. The left ventricle (LV) was divided into apical, mid, and basal segments per visualization of the papillary muscles. Edema mass was assessed separately in each segment as well as the total edema mass in both the TIRM and T2 mapping. Twenty-four patients of whom 12.5% had multi-territorial coronary lesions and edema were assessed. Myocardial edema was not assessed in thirteen patients (35%) due to significant intra myocardial hemorrhage (T2 mapping < 60 ms). No statistical significance was found between the TIRM and the T2 mapping neither in the total amount of edema ( p = 0.79), nor in the LV basal, mid, and apical segments’ edema ( p = 0.69, 0.5, and 0.8 respectively). The upper and lower limits of agreements were tested between the TIRM and the T2 mapping of total edema mass, basal segments, mid, and apical ventricular segments were = 18 and − 7.7 g, 11.3 and − 5.1 g, 12.3 and − 5.2 g, and 15.5 and − 7.8 g respectively. Conclusion This study supports the proof of the principle that there is no statistical significant difference per myocardial segments between the T2 mapping and routine edema’s sequences. Larger studies are recommended to assess the impact in clinical outcome.