New MRI scans to help guide tests for arrhythmia

Arrhythmia insensitive whole-heart late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) MRI for assessment of native, surgical and post-ablation scar tissue in patients with heart rhythm disturbance

Doctors usually investigate and treat alterations in the heart’s rhythm – known as arrhythmias –using electrophysiology (EP). This involves passing flexible electrodes through a blood vessel and carefully placing them at specific positions within the heart. Doctors also use MRI scans to guide the electrodes around scar tissue, and to assess the extent of scar tissue itself, which is often an underlying cause of the arrhythmia. These MRI scans need to be very detailed and can take 5-10 minutes to complete. But if the heart rate varies over this time, the image quality can be poor and assessments may not be accurate. In this study, Dr Jennifer Keegan and her team will develop MRI techniques to improve scar tissue imaging in patients with arrhythmia. She will do this by monitoring the length of the heart beat during the scan. They will then adapt the scanning process, based on the individual patient’s heart and breathing patterns, to make it more accurate. After testing the new technique using computer simulations, and by scanning test objects, they will use it with a clinical MRI scanner in a group of 60 patients. The aim is to provide more accurate and personalised scans of scar tissue which will better guide EP studies and improve patient care.