Correcting versus resolving respiratory motion in free-breathing whole-heart MRA: a comparison in patients with thoracic aortic disease

Whole-heart magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) requires sophisticated methods accounting for respiratory motion. Our purpose was to evaluate the image quality of compressed sensing-based respiratory motion-resolved three-dimensional (3D) whole-heart MRA compared with self-navigated motion-corrected whole-heart MRA in patients with known thoracic aorta dilation.

Twenty-five patients were prospectively enrolled in this ethically approved study. Whole-heart 1.5-T MRA was acquired using a prototype 3D radial steady-state free-precession free-breathing sequence. The same data were reconstructed with a one-dimensional motion-correction algorithm (1D-MCA) and an extradimensional golden-angle radial sparse parallel reconstruction (XD-GRASP). Subjective image quality was scored and objective image quality was quantified (signal intensity ratio, SIR; vessel sharpness). Wilcoxon, McNemar, and paired t tests were used.

Subjective image quality was significantly higher using XD-GRASP compared to 1D-MCA (median 4.5, interquartile range 4.5-5.0 versus 4.0 [2.25-4.75]; p < 0.001), as well as signal homogeneity (3.0 [3.0-3.0] versus 2.0 [2.0-3.0]; p = 0.003), and image sharpness (3.0 [2.0-3.0] vs 2.0 [1.25-3.0]; p < 0.001). SIR with the 1D-MCA and XD-GRASP was 6.1 ± 3.9 versus 7.4 ± 2.5, respectively (p < 0.001); while signal homogeneity was 274.2 ± 265.0 versus 199.8 ± 67.2 (p = 0.129). XD-GRASP provided a higher vessel sharpness (45.3 ± 10.7 versus 40.6 ± 101, p = 0.025).

XD-GRASP-based motion-resolved reconstruction of free-breathing 3D whole-heart MRA datasets provides improved image contrast, sharpness, and signal homogeneity and seems to be a promising technique that overcomes some of the limitations of motion correction or respiratory navigator gating.