Cardiac MRI Evaluation of Mixed Venous Oxygen Saturation: Role in Heart Failure Assessment, Management, and Prognostication

Doctors currently have to thread a catheter into a patient’s heart to measure how much oxygen the blood carries back from the body—an invasive procedure that carries risk of infection and bleeding. This matters because that oxygen level, called mixed venous oxygen saturation, is a key indicator of how severely heart failure is straining the body. Without it, clinicians rely on less direct measures like exercise tests or patient-reported symptoms, which can be imprecise. The researchers are developing a way to extract the same information from a standard cardiac MRI scan, which heart failure patients already undergo routinely. If the technique proves accurate against catheter measurements, it would give doctors a non-invasive, repeatable tool to assess disease severity and track whether treatments are working. That could change how heart failure is managed day-to-day in clinics, allowing earlier adjustments to medication or referrals without the need for an invasive procedure. The project does not claim to cure heart failure, but it aims to make a common diagnostic step safer and more accessible.