Blood pool contrast agent (CMD)-A2-Gd-DOTA-enhanced MR imaging of infarcted myocardium in pigs

The purpose of this study was to assess the ability of the new blood pool c ontrast agent meglumine-carboxymethyl-dextran-ethylenediamino-gadoterate (C MD-A2-Gd-DOTA) to depict acute occlusive myocardial infarction (AMI), First -pass gradient-echo and delayed spin-echo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was performed 5 days after induction of AMI in a pig model, MRI was correla ted with pathology. First-pass imaging with CMD-A2-Gd-DOTA allowed detectio n of infarcted myocardium in all pigs (n = 7). The infarction was recognize d as a black spot on MRI as well as on a parametric image, The signal inten sity [SI) amplitudes of normal versus infarcted myocardium were 80.55 +/- 1 8.61 versus 8.48 +/- 15.50 on MRI and 81.62 +/- 18.50 versus 1.61 +/- 3.73 on the parametric image (both P values < 0.001, The contrast ratio between normal and infarcted myocardium was not significantly improved on spin-echo MRI, suggesting largely intact vascular integrity outside the occluded are a, CMD-A2-Gd-DOTA is useful for depicting occlusive myocardial infarction b y first-pass MRI, Spin-echo imaging is promising in assessing vascular inte grity. (C) 1999 Wiley-Liss, Inc.