Multi-dimensional flow-preserving compressed sensing (MuFloCoS) for time-resolved velocity-encoded phase contrast MRI

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Imaging
• Medical Physics
• Biomedical Engineering

Background:

• 4-D time-resolved velocity-encoded phase-contrast MRI (4-D PCI) offers non-invasive hemodynamic assessment for cardiovascular diseases.
• Current limitations include long acquisition times, hindering widespread clinical adoption.
• Existing acceleration methods like parallel MRI (pMRI) can degrade image quality.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a novel compressed sensing (CS) method, MuFloCoS, for accelerating 4-D PCI.
• To leverage the high dimensionality and spatio-temporal correlations inherent in 4-D PCI data.
• To improve image quality, quantitative flow accuracy, and diagnostic utility of accelerated 4-D PCI.

Main Methods:

• Proposed the Multi-Dimensional Flow-preserving Compressed Sensing (MuFloCoS) method.
• Combined multi-dimensional iterative reconstruction with interleaved sampling (I-VT) and adaptive temporal regularization (TMW).
• Utilized automatically generated vessel-masks and evaluated performance in phantoms and 18 volunteers.

Main Results:

• MuFloCoS demonstrated feasibility for acceleration factors up to 15.
• Achieved a 45.32% reduction in temporal normalized root mean square error of peak velocity at acceleration factor 9 compared to state-of-the-art methods.
• Successfully applied to patient cases with internal carotid artery (ICA) stenosis, reducing scan time from over 8 minutes to 56 seconds.

Conclusions:

• MuFloCoS significantly enhances the speed and quality of 4-D PCI.
• The method enables rapid and accurate hemodynamic assessment, even in the presence of pathological findings.
• MuFloCoS holds promise for broader clinical application in diagnosing and managing cardiovascular diseases.