title: Short breath-hold, volumetric coronary MR angiography employing steady-state free precession in conjunction with parallel imaging.
abstract: An ECG-gated, 3D steady-state free precession (SSFP) technique in conjunction with sensitivity encoding (SENSE)-based parallel imaging was implemented for short breath-hold, volumetric coronary MR angiograpy (CMRA). Two parallel imaging acquisition strategies (employing 1 R-R and 2 R-R intervals, respectively) were developed to achieve 1) very short breath-hold times (12 s for a heart rate of 60 bpm), and 2) small acquisition windows to minimize sensitivity to physiologic motion. Both strategies were examined in CMRA applications over a range of heart rates. A four-point scale blinded reading (with 4 indicating the most desirable features) revealed substantial image quality improvements for the accelerated data as compared to the nonaccelerated approach. The 1 R-R interval scheme yielded an image score of 3.39 +/- 0.60, and was found to be particularly suitable for low heart rates (P = 0.0008). The 2 R-R interval strategy yielded an image score of 3.35 +/- 0.64, and was more appropriate for higher heart rates (P = 0.03). The results demonstrate that 3D SSFP combined with parallel imaging is a versatile method for short breath-hold CMRA while maintaining high spatial resolution. This strategy permits imaging of the major coronary artery distributions in two to three breath-holds using targeted slabs, and offers the potential for single breath-hold, large-volume CMRA.
authors.affiliation: Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Thoralf
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Niendorf
authors.forename: Manojkumar
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Saranathan
authors.forename: Anila
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lingamneni
authors.forename: Ivan
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Pedrosa
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Spencer
authors.forename: Harvey
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Cline
authors.forename: Thomas K F
authors.initials: TK
authors.lastname: Foo
authors.forename: Neil M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Rofsky
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D017023:Coronary Angiography / Q000379:methods*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D012119:Respiration