High spatial and temporal resolution cardiac cine MRI from retrospective reconstruction of data acquired in real time using motion correction and resorting.
Cine MRI is used for assessing cardiac function and flow and is typically based on a breath-held, segmented data acquisition. Breath holding is particularly difficult for patients with congestive heart failure or in pediatric cases. Real-time imaging may be used without breath holding or ECG triggering. However, despite the use of rapid imaging sequences and accelerated parallel imaging, real-time imaging typically has compromised spatial and temporal resolution compared with gated, segmented breath-held studies. A new method is proposed that produces a cardiac cine across the full cycle, with both high spatial and temporal resolution from a retrospective reconstruction of data acquired over multiple heartbeats during free breathing. The proposed method was compared with conventional cine images in 10 subjects. The resultant image quality for the proposed method (4.2 +/- 0.4) without breath holding or gating was comparable to the conventional cine (4.4 +/- 0.5) on a five-point scale (P = n.s.). Motion-corrected averaging of real-time acquired cardiac images provides a means of attaining high-quality cine images with many of the benefits of real-time imaging, such as free-breathing acquisition and tolerance to arrhythmias.
Laboratory of Cardiac Energetics, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, DHHS, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-1061, USA. kellman@nih.gov
Peter
P
Kellman
Christophe
C
Chefd'hotel
Christine H
CH
Lorenz
Christine
C
Mancini
Andrew E
AE
Arai
Elliot R
ER
McVeigh
D000465:Algorithms; D016477:Artifacts; D055424:Cardiac-Gated Imaging Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D003199:Computer Systems; D003324:Coronary Artery Disease / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods; D019028:Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Cine / Q000379:methods*; D009038:Motion; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000175:diagnosis*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D055425:Respiratory-Gated Imaging Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity