Cardiac function analysis in multi-cycle real-time MRI

A variety of different drugs block cardiac IKr-currents thus causing a serious side effect, the so called acquired Long-QT syndrome with a prolongation of cardiac repolarization (prolonged QT interval) and sudden cardiac death. Using Tissue Phase Mapping, we investigated the influence of IKr-blocking drug E4031 on global and segmental mechanical cardiac function in transgenic LQT type 1 rabbits (loss of IKs, with a particularly high susceptibility to IKr-blocking drugs) and wild-type littermate controls.