Quantification of myocardial edema and necrosis during acute myocardial infarction

Quantification of myocardial edema and necrosis during acute myocardial infarct (MI) is crucial for patientpsilas prognosis. The aim of this study was to evaluate these two parameters from MRI late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) and T2 weighted short Tau inversion recovery (STIR) black-blood sequences acquired in 22 patients with MI. To estimate the necrosis and edema volumes, a clustering method based on a fuzzy c-means algorithm was used. Results were compared against a manual delimitation and a semi-automatic thresholding currently reported in the literature. The proposed estimation of the necrosis volume was strongly correlated with both the semi automatic method and the manual delineation (r>0.9). For the quantification of the edema, the approach was valid, except for small size infarcts. Thus the automated quantification of necrosis is reliable compared to conventional approaches, and the method is encouraging for the quantification of edema.