Research progresses and applications of cardiac MR in myocardial fibrosis of ischemic heart failure

Myocardial fibrosis (MF) has already been recognized as the fundamental process in the pathogenesis of ischemic heart failure (IHF). The detection of MF is difficult at present. The gold standard of MF is myocardial biopsy, but it has low accuracy and certain risk of disability and death. Cardiac MR (CMR) can be used to evaluate the MF noninvasively and quantitatively, such as late-gadolinium enhancement, T1 mapping and T1ρ, which is an important technology for clinical assessment and intervention of MF. The research progresses and applications of CMR in MF of ischemic heart failure were reviewed in this article.