Highly accelerated real-time cardiac cine MRI using k-t SPARSE-SENSE

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Imaging
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• Medical Physics

Background:

• Real-time cine MRI is valuable for patients with arrhythmias or limited breath-hold capacity.
• Current real-time cine MRI methods often compromise spatial-temporal resolution due to slow acquisition speeds.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an accelerated real-time cardiac cine MRI technique with high spatial and temporal resolution.
• To enable clinical applications like wall motion assessment and left ventricular function measurement.

Main Methods:

• An eightfold accelerated real-time cardiac cine MRI pulse sequence was developed.
• The sequence combined compressed sensing and parallel imaging (k-t SPARSE-SENSE).

Main Results:

• The k-t SPARSE-SENSE sequence achieved spatial resolution of ~2.5 × 2.5 mm² and temporal resolution of ~40 ms.
• While qualitative grades were lower than breath-hold MRI, image quality and temporal fidelity scores were adequate (>3.0).
• Artifacts and noise scores were moderate (<3.0), and left ventricular function measurements were comparable (CV <10%).

Conclusions:

• The proposed eightfold accelerated real-time cine MRI with k-t SPARSE-SENSE is a promising technique for rapid myocardial function imaging.
• This modality can achieve acceptable diagnostic image quality for clinical use.