Comparative Analysis of Tagging and Feature-Tracking Cardiac MRI Techniques for the Evaluation of Cardiac Deformation

Currently, there is a high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, being the leading cause of mortality worldwide. Thus, a rapid and effective evaluation of the heart is increasingly relevant to diagnose the patient early and achieve appropriate treatment. For this reason, this study aims to compare myocardial deformation parameters such as circumferential strain (segmental, base, mid, apical and global) and global torsion values by the CMR tissue tagging reference technique in SPAMM cine images and the promising featuretracking technique in b-SSFP cine images, in 31 healthy subjects and 35 patients diagnosed with infarct. The results obtained showed that there is a high agreement in the inter-technique and inter-observer reproducibility for all myocardial parameters evaluated. Therefore, it can be determined the CMR featuretracking technique is highly reproducible for circumferential strain and torsion parameters and could currently be a reliable clinical alternative to assess myocardial function.