................................................................................................................................. 2 List of Figures ....................................................................................................................... 9 List of Tables ......................................................................................................................14 List of Abbreviations .......................................................................................................16 Acknowledgment ..............................................................................................................18 Chapter 1 Thesis Outline ...............................................................................................20 1.1 Thesis Aims ........................................................................................................................... 20 1.2 Chapter Overview ............................................................................................................... 20 Chapter 2 Introduction ...................................................................................................23 2.1 Principles of cardiac magnetic resonance imaging ............................................... 23 2.1.1 Basic physics of MRI ................................................................................................................ 23 2.1.2 T1 and T2 relaxation ............................................................................................................... 25 2.1.3 Cardiac and respiratory motion compensation ........................................................... 26 2.2 Inversion recovery sequences and late gadolinium enhancement for myocardial scar imaging ......................................................................................................... 28 2.3 Grey zone ............................................................................................................................... 29 2.4 T1 mapping ........................................................................................................................... 30 2.5 Relevance of myocardial scar to ventricular arrhythmia .................................... 35 2.6 Relevance of myocardial scar to cardiac resynchronisation therapy response........................................................................................................................................ 37 Chapter 3 General Methods ..........................................................................................41 3.1 Ethics ....................................................................................................................................... 41 3.2 Patient selection ................................................................................................................. 41 3.3 Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging ......................................................................... 42 3.3.1 CMR protocol .............................................................................................................................. 42 3.3.2 Image analysis ............................................................................................................................ 43 3.4 Echocardiography .............................................................................................................. 44 3.5 Activation recovery interval measurement .............................................................. 45 3.6 Statistics ................................................................................................................................. 46