Acute cardiac rejection is currently diagnosed by endomyocardial biopsy (EMB), but multiparametric cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) may be a non-invasive alternative by its capacity for myocardial structure and function characterization. Our primary aim was to determine the utility of multiparametric CMR in identifying acute graft rejection in paediatric heart transplant recipients. The second aim was to compare textural features of parametric maps in cases of rejection versus those without rejection.
children and young adults (transplanted when they were ≤ 18 years) who undergo an EMB for routine surveillance without contraindications to contrast-enhanced CMR
We also don't recruit recipients who were < 3 months post-heart transplantation to reduce the possibility of confounding from ischemia-reperfusion injury that occurs with the heart transplant procedure