Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging of 96 patients revealed that acute myocardial infarction releases approximately 40% more troponin per gram of damaged heart tissue compared to acute myocarditis, despite both conditions showing similar correlations between peak troponin levels and tissue damage extent. AMI patients had median peak troponin levels of 32,470 ng/L versus 7,295 ng/L in myocarditis patients, with correspondingly larger areas of tissue damage. This finding challenges the clinical assumption that troponin levels can be interpreted uniformly across different types of heart muscle injury. The distinction matters clinically because troponin is the primary biomarker used to assess heart damage severity and guide treatment decisions in emergency departments worldwide. Understanding that ischemic damage produces more troponin per unit of tissue injury than inflammatory damage could refine risk stratification and treatment protocols. However, this retrospective analysis of a relatively small cohort has limitations, and the findings represent observational associations rather than causal mechanisms. As a preprint awaiting peer review, these results require validation through larger prospective studies before potentially influencing clinical practice guidelines for cardiac biomarker interpretation.