Patent ID: 8086297

Claim:
A magnetic resonance imaging method comprising: injecting a live patient with a paramagnetic contrast agent that collects within dead heart tissue; applying a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) slice-selective preparation pulse to the patient's chest; waiting a first delay time that is a function of both: (a) healthy heart tissue longitudinal relaxation time T 1 and (b) a second delay time such that the patient's blood appears nulled based on the blood longitudinal relaxation time T 1 ; then applying a nuclear magnetic resonance non-spatially selective inversion preparation pulse to the patient's chest; then waiting the second delay time to allow blood the patient's heart contained at the time of said slice-selective preparation pulse to be expelled from the patient's heart; then acquiring NMR echoes conditioned by the preparation pulses and first and second delay times so that magnetization of healthy heart tissue and blood are substantially the same; and generating an image based on said acquired NMR echoes, wherein the image shows normal heart tissue and blood within the patient's heart as the same color or intensity and shows the patient's dead heart tissue as a different color or intensity.