In vivo diffusion-weighted MRI detection of myocardial fibrosis in hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patients

Background Recent studies have demonstrated the potential of in vivo diffusion-weighted MRI (DWI) in detecting myocardial replacement fibrosis for chronic myocardial infarction [1-3]. Despite the potential of this contrastfree technique, detecting diffuse myocardial fibrosis with DWI has not been established. Current cardiac MRI (CMR) techniques to detect diffuse myocardial fibrosis include late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) [4], pre/ post contrast T1 mapping [5], and extracellular volume (ECV) mapping [6]. We propose the application of a recently developed cardiac DWI technique [7] to detect diffuse myocardial fibrosis in HCM patients and compare its performance with established CMR techniques.