Bram Coolen

Small animal cardiac MRI has been applied in (bio)-medical research for more than two decades and has become the gold standard technique for various cardiac structural and functional parameters. The success of cardiac MRI in mice and rats is mainly due to the continuous developments for improving acquisition strategies and software analysis solutions. In this educational lecture, some of these technological advances will be highlighted, such as retrospective triggering techniques in combination with compressed sensing reconstruction, dedicated coils for further scan acceleration and sensitivity and image analysis tools to assess different cardiac functional parameters, including latest AI based approaches.

Katrien Vandoorne

Cardiac MR techniques have been applied in small animal cardiovascular disease research, resulting in quantifying several hallmarks of cardiovascular disease.  Hallmarks such as muscularization, angiogenesis and vessel stability, fibrotic balance, as well as immunological balance will be addressed as they eventually contribute to organ decline, reduced cardiac function and death. The technological challenges emerging from the small size of heart as well as high-pace cardiac and respiratory rates, particularly in mice, have been tackled. Cardiac tissue characterization could help us understand the sequence of events and cardiac tissue changes in cardiovascular disease progression.

Jeanine Prompers

Metabolic derangements have been identified in various cardiac pathologies and, vice versa, many metabolic disorders may lead to a cardiac phenotype. MRS provides a noninvasive window to investigate the metabolic pathogenesis of cardiomyopathies and to assess treatment response at an early stage of intervention. Facilitated by ongoing developments, multinuclear cardiac MRS has contributed significantly to preclinical and clinical research efforts to elucidate the role of disturbed myocardial metabolism in the etiology of cardiomyopathies. In this educational, we highlight the major applications and results, and discuss recent methodological advancements and remaining challenges towards applications of cardiac multinuclear MRS.

Daniel Stuckey

Cardiac imaging has revolutionized our ability to diagnose heart disease, quantify mechanisms of pathology, and determine optimal therapy in patients. Current techniques can interrogate structure, contractility and metabolism but struggle to directly quantify one of the most important determinants of patient morbidity, myocardial viability. This presentation will provide an overview of current clinical and preclinical methods for evaluating cardiac function and viability in acute myocardial infarction, then discuss some emerging technologies that could improve our ability to monitor disease progression and response to experimental therapies.