title: Artifact-reduced two-dimensional cine steady state free precession for myocardial blood- oxygen-level-dependent imaging.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To minimize image artifacts in long TR cardiac phase-resolved steady state free precession (SSFP) based blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) imaging.
  
  
  METHODS
  Nine healthy dogs (four male, five female, 20-25 kg) were studied in a clinical 1.5 Tesla MRI scanner to investigate the effect of temporal resolution, readout bandwidth, and motion compensation on long repetition time (TR) SSFP images. Breath-held 2D SSFP cine sequences with various temporal resolutions (10-204 ms), bandwidths (239-930 Hz/pixel), with and without first-order motion compensation were prescribed in the basal, mid-ventricular, and apical along the short axis. Preliminary myocardial BOLD studies in dogs with controllable coronary stenosis were performed to assess the benefits of artifact-reduction strategies.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Shortening the readout time by means of increasing readout bandwidth had no observable reduction in image artifacts. However, increasing the temporal resolution in the presence of first-order motion compensation led to significant reduction in image artifacts. Preliminary studies demonstrated that BOLD signal changes can be reliably detected throughout the cardiac cycle.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Artifact-reduction methods used in this study provide significant improvement in image quality compared with conventional long TR SSFP BOLD MRI. It is envisioned that the methods proposed here may enable reliable detection of myocardial oxygenation changes throughout the cardiac cycle with long TR SSFP-based myocardial BOLD MRI.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois 60611, USA.
authors.forename: Xiangzhi
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Sotirios A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Tsaftaris
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Klein
authors.forename: Sven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zuehlsdorff
authors.forename: Debiao
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Rohan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dharmakumar
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D016477:Artifacts; D004285:Dogs; D005260:Female; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D019028:Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Cine / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009206:Myocardium / Q000473:pathology*; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood* / Q000378:metabolism*; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D010100:Oxygen