Automatic motion correction for quantification of myocardial perfusion with dynamic magnetic resonance imaging

Respiratory motion makes it difficult to quantify myocardial perfusion with dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The purpose of this study was to evaluate an automatic registration method for motion correction for quantification of myocardial perfusion with dynamic MRI. The present method was based on the gradient-based method with robust estimation of displacement parameters. For comparison, we also corrected for motion with manual registration as the benchmark. The myocardial kinetic parameters, K1 (rate constant for transfer of contrast agent from blood to myocardium) and k2 (rate constant for transfer from myocardium to blood), were calculated from dynamic images with a two-compartment model. The images corrected by the present method were similar to those corrected by manual registration. The kinetic parameters obtained after motion correction with the present method were close to those obtained after motion correction with manual registration. These results suggest that the present method is useful for motion correction for quantification of myocardial perfusion with dynamic MRI.