How reliably can MRI measure heart muscle stiffness?

This episode explores a study from The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University in Hefei, China, with Mayo Clinic collaborators, testing whether cardiac MR elastography can quantify left ventricular stiffness reliably enough for longitudinal use. Sixty-nine participants — 60 healthy volunteers and 9 patients with aortic stenosis or long-standing hypertension — underwent baseline scans, five-minute rescans, and one-month rescans, read independently by two radiologists. Agreement was excellent across readers and intervals, with stiffness ICCs of 0.96 to 0.97, and the study defined the smallest change that counts as real — roughly 0.6 to 0.9 kilopascals — paving the way for tracking therapies that soften the heart. Reproducibility of 3.0 T single-frequency cardiac MR elastography for quantification of left ventricular myocardial stiffness. Wang. Radiology Advances, 2026, 3, umag032