Prospective respiratory motion correction for coronary MR angiography using a 2D image navigator

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Imaging
• Medical Physics
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• Respiratory motion significantly degrades coronary magnetic resonance angiography (CMRA) image quality.
• Current motion correction relies on 1D navigators (1Dnav) with limitations in accurately capturing complex respiratory motion.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce and evaluate a novel 2D navigator (2Dnav) for prospective respiratory motion correction in CMRA.
• To compare the performance of 2Dnav against conventional 1Dnav in reducing respiratory motion artifacts.

Main Methods:

• Comparison of 1Dnav and 2Dnav in 2D real-time imaging experiments with healthy subjects and a moving phantom.
• Acquisition of high-resolution 3D CM angiograms using both 1Dnav and 2Dnav correction.
• Assessment of objective and subjective image quality, including residual motion and visual scores.

Main Results:

• 1Dnav and 2Dnav demonstrated comparable performance with a 10 mm gating window.
• Without respiratory gating, 2Dnav achieved image quality similar to 1Dnav with 10 mm gating.
• 1Dnav without gating resulted in lower visual scores for all coronary arteries compared to 10 mm gating.

Conclusions:

• The proposed 2Dnav offers improved prospective respiratory motion correction for CMRA, particularly beneficial in scenarios without strict gating.
• 2Dnav enhances image quality in CMRA by effectively correcting translational motion in multiple directions.
• This novel approach holds potential for improving diagnostic accuracy in CMRA by reducing motion-related artifacts.