Myocardial delayed enhancement using a single (0.1 mmol/kg) dose of gadobenate dimeglumine : contrast resolution versus intraventricular blood and viable myocardium

This study was done to estimate delayed enhancement (DE) contrast resolution of infarcted myocardium (IM) relative to intraventricular blood (IB) and viable myocardium (VM) using gadobenate dimeglumine (Gd-BOPTA). After approval from the Ethics Committee, we retrospectively evaluated 21 consecutive patients (61 +/- 10 years) with a healed myocardial infarction who underwent 1.5-T magnetic resonance (MR) imaging using an inversion-recovery-prepared turbo gradient-echo sequence 10 minutes after injection of 0.1 mmol/kg of Gd-BOPTA. Signal intensity (SI) was measured in arbitrary units (au) for IM, IB, VM, and outside the patient. Contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) was calculated for IM to IB and IM to VM. Seven consecutive patients (59 +/- 6 years) with a healed myocardial infarction studied with similar technique but with 0.1 mmol/kg of gadoterate meglumine (Gd-DOTA) served as the control group. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare groups. Mean SI of IM was 44 +/- 16 au for Gd-BOPTA and 20 +/- 6 au for Gd-DOTA (p < 0.001), that of IB 35 +/- 15 au and 14 +/- 5 au (p=0.016), and that of VM 7 +/- 3 au and 5 +/- 2 au (p=0.116), respectively. Mean IM to IB CNR was 10 +/- 7 for Gd-BOPTA and 8 +/- 5 for Gd-DOTA (p=0.836), that of IM to VM was 45 +/- 27 and 18 +/- 6, respectively (p=0.012). Gd-BOPTA at 0.1 mmol/kg produced a higher myocardial DE and an IM to VM CNR than a single dose of Gd-DOTA. No significant difference was observed for IM to IB CNR.