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

Purpose: 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). Materials and methods: 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. Results: 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). Conclusions: 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.