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Background: As a noninvasive tool, myocardial deformation imaging may facilitate the early detection of cardiac dysfunction. However, normal reference ranges of myocardial strain and strain rate (SR) based on large-scale East Asian populations are still lacking. This study aimed to provide reference values of left ventricular (LV) and right ventricular (RV) strain and SR based on a large cohort of healthy Chinese adults using cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) feature tracking (FT). Methods: Five hundred and sixty-six healthy Chinese adults (55.1% men) free of hypertension, diabetes, and obesity were included. On cine CMR, biventricular global radial, circumferential, and longitudinal strain (GRS, GCS, and GLS), and the peak radial, circumferential, and longitudinal systolic, and diastolic SRs (PSSRR, PSSRC, PSSRL, PDSRR, PDSRC, and PDSRL), and regional radial and circumferential strain at the basal, mid-cavity, and apical levels were measured. Associations of global and regional biventricular deformation indices with age and sex were investigated. Results: Women demonstrated greater magnitudes of LV GRS (37.6 ± 6.1% vs. 32.1 ± 5.3%), GCS (− 20.7 ± 1.9% vs. − 18.8 ± 1.9%), GLS (− 17.8 ± 1.8% vs. − 15.6 ± 1.8%), RV GRS (25.1 ± 7.8% vs. 22.1 ± 6.7%), GCS (− 14.4 ± 3.6% vs. − 13.2 ± 3.2%), GLS (− 22.4 ± 5.2% vs. − 20.2 ± 4.6%), and biventricular peak systolic and diastolic SR in all three coordinate directions (all P < 0.05). For the LV, aging was associated with increasing amplitudes of GRS, GCS, and decreasing amplitudes of PDSRR, PDSRC, PDSRL (all P < 0.05). For the RV, aging was associated with an increase in the magnitudes of GRS, GCS, GLS, PSSRR, PSSRC, PSSRL, and a decrease in the magnitude of PDSRR, PDSRC (all P < 0.05). Biventricular radial and circumferential strain measurements at the basal, mid-cavity, and apical levels were all significantly related to age and sex in both sexes (all P < 0.05). Conclusions: We provide age- and sex-specific normal values of biventricular strain and SR based on a large sample of healthy Chinese adults with a broad age range. These results may be served as a reference standard for cardiac function assessment, especially for the Chinese population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: 3D non-contrast high-resolution black-blood cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) (DANTE-SPACE) has been used for surveillance of abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) and validated against computed tomography (CT) angiography. However, it requires a long scan time of more than 7 min. We sought to develop an accelerated sequence applying compressed sensing (CS-DANTE-SPACE) and validate it in AAA patients undergoing surveillance. Methods: Thirty-eight AAA patients (all males, 73 ± 6 years) under clinical surveillance were recruited for this study. All patients were scanned with DANTE-SPACE (scan time 7:10 min) and CS-DANTE-SPACE (scan time 4:12 min, a reduction of 41.4%). Nine 9 patients were scanned more than 2 times. In total, 50 pairs of images were available for comparison. Two radiologists independently evaluated the image quality on a 1–4 scale, and measured the maximal diameter of AAA, the intra-luminal thrombus (ILT) and lumen area, ILT-to-muscle signal intensity ratio, and the ILT-to-lumen contrast ratio. The sharpness of the aneurysm inner/outer boundaries was quantified. Results: CS-DANTE-SPACE achieved comparable image quality compared with DANTE-SPACE (3.15 ± 0.67 vs. 3.03 ± 0.64, p = 0.06). There was excellent agreement between results from the two sequences for diameter/area and ILT ratio measurements (ICCs> 0.85), and for quantifying growth rate (3.3 ± 3.1 vs. 3.3 ± 3.4 mm/year, ICC = 0.95.) CS-DANTE-SPACE showed a higher ILT-to-lumen contrast ratio (p = 0.01) and higher sharpness than DANTE-SPACE (p = 0.002). Both sequences had excellent inter-reader reproducibility for quantitative measurements (ICC > 0.88). Conclusion: CS-DANTE-SPACE can reduce scan time while maintaining image quality for AAA imaging. It is a promising tool for the surveillance of patients with AAA disease in the clinical setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]