Fig. 2

The FAIR labeling scheme (upper part) consists in two inversion recovery measurements. In the first measurement the labeling zone is only around the imaging slice, and in the second measurement the inversion is global. FAIR is the most commonly used ASL technique in the heart. The timing of the inversion and that of the readout modules should be ECG-gated and occur in the same cardiac phase. The Look-Locker inversion-recovery readout (lower part) has been used mainly (although not exclusively) in the rodent heart, where the rapid heart rate permits dense sampling of the magnetization recovery curve. Due to the lower heart rate in humans, only one readout at a specific inversion time is generally performed