Quantitative assessment of myocardial fibrosis in an age-related rat model by ex vivo late gadolinium enhancement magnetic resonance imaging with histopathological correlation

This study assessed age-related diffuse myocardial fibrosis in two different age rat groups using quantitative texture analysis of high resolution ex-vivo late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging. Results were compared with histological references. There was a significant increase of collagen fibers (%LV fibrosis) in the LGE CMR and contrast texture images of the elderly compared to the young group. Our results suggest that texture analysis may improve the assessment of subtle age-related myocardial fibrosis from LGE CMR images with a higher separability and increased SNR.235