Optimization of PROPELLER reconstruction for free-breathing T1-weighted cardiac imaging.
OBJECTIVE
Clinical cardiac MR imaging techniques generally require patients to hold their breath during the scanning process to minimize respiratory motion-related artifacts. However, some patients cannot hold their breath because of illness or limited breath-hold capacity. This study aims to optimize the PROPELLER reconstruction for free-breathing myocardial T1-weighted imaging.


METHODS
Eight healthy volunteers (8 men; mean age 26.4 years) participated in this study after providing institutionally approved consent. The PROPELLER encoding method can reconstruct a low-resolution image from every blade because of k-space center oversampling. This study investigated the feasibility of extracting a respiratory trace from the PROPELLER blades by implementing a fully automatic region of interest selection and introducing a best template index to account for the property of the human respiration cycle.


RESULTS
Results demonstrated that the proposed algorithm significantly improves the contrast-to-noise ratio and the image sharpness (p < 0.05).


CONCLUSIONS
The PROPELLER method is expected to provide a robust tool for clinical application in free-breathing myocardial T1-weighted imaging. It could greatly facilitate the acquisition procedures during such a routine examination.
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan 106, Republic of China. tyhuang@mail.ntust.edu.tw
Teng-Yi
TY
Huang
Yu-Shen
YS
Tseng
Yu-Wei
YW
Tang
Yi-Ru
YR
Lin
D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D016477:Artifacts; D001331:Automation; D057791:Cardiac Imaging Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods; D004562:Electrocardiography / Q000379:methods*; D004867:Equipment Design; D017143:Fuzzy Logic; D006321:Heart / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D009206:Myocardium / Q000473:pathology*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012119:Respiration; D012984:Software