title: Fetal cardiac cine imaging using highly accelerated dynamic MRI with retrospective motion correction and outlier rejection.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Development of a MRI acquisition and reconstruction strategy to depict fetal cardiac anatomy in the presence of maternal and fetal motion.
  
  
  METHODS
  The proposed strategy involves i) acquisition and reconstruction of highly accelerated dynamic MRI, followed by image-based ii) cardiac synchronization, iii) motion correction, iv) outlier rejection, and finally v) cardiac cine reconstruction. Postprocessing entirely was automated, aside from a user-defined region of interest delineating the fetal heart. The method was evaluated in 30 mid- to late gestational age singleton pregnancies scanned without maternal breath-hold.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The combination of complementary acquisition/reconstruction and correction/rejection steps in the pipeline served to improve the quality of the reconstructed 2D cine images, resulting in increased visibility of small, dynamic anatomical features. Artifact-free cine images successfully were produced in 36 of 39 acquired data sets; prolonged general fetal movements precluded processing of the remaining three data sets.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The proposed method shows promise as a motion-tolerant framework to enable further detail in MRI studies of the fetal heart and great vessels. Processing data in image-space allowed for spatial and temporal operations to be applied to the fetal heart in isolation, separate from extraneous changes elsewhere in the field of view. Magn Reson Med 79:327-338, 2018. © 2017 The Authors Magnetic Resonance in Medicine published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Joshua F P
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2090-7868
authors.initials: JFP
authors.lastname: van Amerom
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.|Department of Congenital Heart Disease, Evelina Children's Hospital, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: David F A
authors.initials: DFA
authors.lastname: Lloyd
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Anthony N
authors.initials: AN
authors.lastname: Price
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Maria
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kuklisova Murgasova
authors.affiliation: Centre for the Developing Brain, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Aljabar
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Shaihan J
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8925-9032
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Malik
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Maelene
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lohezic
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.|Centre for the Developing Brain, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Mary A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Rutherford
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.|Department of Congenital Heart Disease, Evelina Children's Hospital, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Kuberan
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Pushparajah
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.|Department of Congenital Heart Disease, Evelina Children's Hospital, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Reza
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Razavi
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Joseph V
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2690-5495
authors.initials: JV
authors.lastname: Hajnal
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016477:Artifacts; D055424:Cardiac-Gated Imaging Techniques; D005260:Female; D005318:Fetal Heart / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D006801:Humans; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D019028:Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Cine; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009038:Motion; D011247:Pregnancy; D011263:Pregnancy Trimester, Third; D011296:Prenatal Diagnosis / Q000379:methods*; D011336:Probability; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: cardiac cine; congenital heart disease; fetal heart; magnetic resonance imaging; motion correction