Assessment of myocardial changes in athletes with native T1 mapping and cardiac functional evaluation using 3 T MRI

Intensive physical exercise leads to increases in left ventricular muscle mass and wall thickness. Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging allows the assessment of functional and morphological changes in an athlete’s heart. In addition, a native T1 mapping technique has been suggested as a non-contrast method to detect myocardial fibrosis. The aim of this study was to show the correlation between athletes’ cardiac modifications and myocardial fibrosis with a native T1 mapping technique. A total of 41 healthy non-athletic control subjects and 46 athletes underwent CMR imaging. After the functional and morphological assessments, native T1 mapping was performed in all subjects using 3.0 T magnetic resonance imaging. Most of the CMR findings were significantly higher in athletes who had ≥5 years of sports activity when compared with non-athletic controls and athletes who had <5 years of sports activity. Significantly higher results were shown in native T1 values in athletes who had <5 years of sports activity, but there were no significant differences in the left ventricular end-diastolic volume, left ventricular end-diastolic mass, or interventricular septal wall thickness between non-athletic controls and athletes who had <5 years of sports activity. The native T1 mapping technique has the potential to discriminate myocardial fibrotic changes in athletes when compared to a normal myocardium. The T1 mapping method might be a feasible technique to evaluate athletes because it does not involve contrast, is non-invasive and allows for easy evaluation of myocardial remodeling.