Fully self‐gated free‐running 3D Cartesian cardiac CINE with isotropic whole‐heart coverage in less than 2 min

Abstract

To develop a novel fast water-selective free-breathing 3D Cartesian cardiac CINE scan with full self-navigation and isotropic whole-heart (WH) coverage. Methods: A free-breathing 3D Cartesian cardiac CINE scan with a water-selective balanced steady-state free precession and a continuous (non-ECG-gated) variabledensity Cartesian sampling with spiral profile ordering, out-inward sampling and acquisition-adaptive alternating tiny golden and golden angle increment between spiral arms is proposed. Data is retrospectively binned based on respiratory and cardiac self-navigation signals. A translational respiratory-motion-corrected and cardiacmotion-resolved image is reconstructed with a multi-bin patch-based low-rank reconstruction (MB-PROST) within about 15 min. A respiratory-motion-resolved approach is also investigated. The proposed 3D Cartesian cardiac CINE is acquired in sagittal orientation in 1 min 50 s for 1.9 mm 3 isotropic WH coverage. Left ventricular (LV) function parameters and image quality derived from a blinded reading of the proposed 3D CINE framework are compared against conventional multi-slice 2D CINE imaging in 10 healthy subjects and 10 patients with suspected cardiovascular disease. Results: The proposed framework provides free-breathing 3D cardiac CINE images with 1.9 mm 3 spatial and about 45 ms temporal resolution in a short acquisition time (<2 min). LV function parameters derived from 3D CINE were in good agreement with 2D CINE (10 healthy subjects and 10 patients). Bias and confidence intervals were obtained for end-systolic volume, end-diastolic volume and ejection fraction of 0.1 ± 3.5 mL, −0.6 ± 8.2 mL and −0.1 ± 2.2%, respectively. Conclusion: The proposed framework enables isotropic 3D Cartesian cardiac CINE under free breathing for fast assessment of cardiac anatomy and function.

A completely automated pipeline for 3D reconstruction of human heart from 2D cine magnetic resonance slices

“…With the recent developments in 3D cine MR acquisitions [49][50][51], the proposed pipeline can also be adapted to reconstruct 3D biventricular meshes from 3D cine MR scans. Due to the high image resolutions of the 3D cine MR imaging, the misalignment correction step will not be necessary.…”

Cardiac MR: From Theory to Practice

“…Finger pulse oximetry can be used as an alternative to ECG, but its signal is delayed relative to the ECG R wave. To overcome these challenges, cardiac self-gating approaches have been proposed to estimate an ECG-like signal directly from the acquired data ( 141 , 142 , 167 , 171 ). The signal is then used for cardiac gating.…”

“…Several solutions have been developed to eliminate the need for ECG synchronization and breath-holding altogether. This allows continuous acquisition of CMR data, known as free-running CMR ( 55 , 167 , 169 , 170 , 179 , 197 , 215 ). After acquisition, data is then sorted into multiple cardiac phases (with the desired temporal resolution) and multiple respiratory motion phases based on the cardiac (ECG, self-navigation, pilot tone, etc.)…”

“…For 3D CMR imaging, non-Cartesian trajectories can be combined with Cartesian sampling, as in, for example, radial stack-of-stars ( 123 , 175 , 212 , 260 , 261 ) or stack-of-spiral ( 262 ) sampling schemes. Alternatively, 3D whole-heart CMR can be achieved using 3D Cartesian trajectories ( 167 , 208 , 254 , 255 ), or 3D non-Cartesian sampling patterns, such as radial “koosh-ball” ( 169 , 182 , 209 ) or spiral phyllotaxis ( 170 , 181 ). Moreover, acquisitions often use a golden-angle ordering scheme for which consecutive k-space spokes are incremented by the golden angle (θ ≈ 111.25°) ( 263 , 264 ), to achieve nearly uniform k-space coverage (also optimal for retrospective binning) and incoherence along both spatial and temporal dimensions.…”

Similarity‐driven multi‐dimensional binning algorithm (SIMBA) for free‐running motion‐suppressed whole‐heart MRA

“…[46][47][48][49] Thus, an important future study will be to compare the diagnostic confidence using SIMBA with that of more conventional methods. Some recent techniques that use continuous acquisitions for whole-heart imaging, including both prospective 50 and retrospective motion management, 12,13,17,18,[51][52][53][54] have the important advantage over SIMBA in that they provide dynamic information. For example, the ferumoxytol-enhanced ROCK-MUSIC technique provides cardiac-resolved reconstructions and demonstrated excellent depiction of the proximal and middle segments of the coronary arteries in pediatric congenital heart-disease patients, 52 whereas the coronary ostia were successfully visualized in all 10 subjects reported in their study.…”