Table 1 Clinical Score criteria

5

Excellent: Uniformly hyper intense blood pool with excellent contrast against myocardium; Myocardium is uniformly bright throughout the cardiac cycle with little evidence of flashing

Excellent: Papillary and endocardial trabeculae are clearly visible in the bright backdrop of blood pool

Excellent: Nearly artifact free images either due to motion or other factors such as banding, or localized signal losses

4

Good: Blood pool significantly brighter than myocardium or Myocardial signal intensity is fairly uniform throughout the cardiac cycle

Good: Papillary and endocardial trabeculae are visible but somewhat blurred during the cardiac cycle

Good: Some motion artifact is present, but does not affect overall image quality; Little or no other artifacts such as banding or localized signal losses

3

Moderate: Diagnostic quality images but with significant loss of blood to myocardial contrast or noticeable variation in myocardial signal through the cardiac cycle but does not hinder diagnosis

Moderate: Myocardial walls are clearly distinguished with barely distinguishable endocardial trabeculae

Moderate: Motion artifacts are visible but does not hinder diagnostic ability

2

Poor: Poor myocardial to blood contrast but still diagnostic

Poor: Both myocardial walls as well as endocardial trabeculae are significantly blurred

Poor: Nearly non-diagnostic images with significant artifacts

1

Non-diagnostic: Blood to myocardial contrast is poor and the images were deemed non-diagnostic

Non-diagnostic: Blood to myocardial edge definition is poor and the images were deemed non-diagnostic

Non-diagnostic image quality