DENSE: Displacement encoding with stimulated echoes in cardiac functional MRI

Displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) was developed for high -resolution myocardial displacement mapping. Pixel phase is modulated by my ocardial displacement and data spatial resolution is limited only by pixel size. 2D displacement vector maps were generated for the systolic action in canines with 0.94 x 1.9 mm nominal in-plane resolution and 2.3 mm/pi displ acement encoding. A radial strain of 0.208 was measured across the free lef t ventricular wall over 105 ms during systole. DENSE displacement maps requ ire small first-order gradient moments for encoding. DENSE magnitude images exhibit black-blood contrast which allows for better myocardial definition and reduced motion related artifacts.