Cardiac magnetic resonance myocardial perfusion imaging for detection of functionally significant obstructive coronary artery disease: a prospective study

Background Cardiac magnetic resonance myocardial perfusion imaging (CMR-MPI) is considered a state of the art non-invasive modality for the detection of reversible ischemia. Recent studies have shown its utility in the diagnosis of coronary artery disease (CAD) and superiority over other established techniques. However, only a few studies compared CMR-MPI against the invasive standard including fractional flow reserve (FFR) and clinical validation in non-specialized centers is scarce. The aim of this study was to validate CMR-MPI in a real-world clinical environment and to test its diagnostic accuracy in symptomatic patients with suspected CAD versus FFR as the reference standard of functionally significant disease. Methods and results 103 symptomatic consecutive patients (62±8.0years, 66% males) with suspected CAD and intermediate or high probability of disease underwent sequential CMR and invasive coronary angiography (XA). The CMR protocol included stress-rest adenosine perfusion, SSFP cine imaging and late-enhancement imaging. Functionally significant CAD was defined as occlusive/sub-occlusive stenoses on XA or non-occlusive stenoses with a FFR measurement of 2mm. On a patient-based model, CMR-MPI had sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values of 89%, 88%, 85%, and 91%, respectively, with a global accuracy of 88%. On a vessel-based analysis, these values were 80%, 93%, 79% and 94%, respectively, with a global accuracy of 90%. Conclusions CMR-MPI had a very high accuracy for detection of functionally significant CAD as assessed by FFR in patients with intermediate to high pretest probability.