Accelerating dual cardiac phase images using undersampled radial phase encoding trajectories.

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Cardiovascular Imaging
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Background:

• Three-dimensional dual-cardiac-phase (3D-DCP) scans provide comprehensive cardiac assessment but suffer from long acquisition times.
• Accelerating 3D-DCP scans is crucial for clinical applicability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To accelerate the acquisition and reconstruction of 3D-DCP scans.
• To exploit redundant k-space information between cardiac phases for faster imaging.

Main Methods:

• A modified radial-phase-encoding trajectory and gridding reconstruction were employed.
• Outer k-space data from end-diastolic and end-systolic phases were combined.
• Prospectively undersampled data (R=4) were reconstructed and compared to iterative SENSE.

Main Results:

• The proposed method achieved high-quality 3D-DCP images with 50% k-space data combination.
• No significant differences in image quality or cardiac volume analysis were found compared to iterative SENSE.
• Reconstruction time was reduced from 40 minutes to 1 minute.

Conclusions:

• The developed method significantly accelerates 3D-DCP scan reconstruction.
• It offers comparable image quality to iterative SENSE within a clinically viable timeframe.
• This approach enhances the efficiency of cardiac MRI.