Isotropic 3D Cartesian single breath-hold CINE MRI with multi-bin patch-based low-rank reconstruction

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Imaging
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• Image Reconstruction

Background:

• Cardiac CINE (cine mode imaging) is crucial for assessing cardiac function.
• Current methods often require multiple breath-holds or compromise on image resolution.
• Developing faster, high-resolution 3D cardiac imaging is a significant clinical need.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a novel framework for isotropic 3D Cartesian cardiac CINE.
• Achieve comprehensive left ventricle (LV) and whole-heart coverage within a single breath-hold.
• Improve imaging speed and maintain diagnostic accuracy.

Main Methods:

• A variable-density Cartesian acquisition with spiral profile ordering and out-inward sampling was employed.
• A novel multi-bin patch-based low-rank reconstruction (MB-PROST) was developed to exploit spatial and temporal redundancies.
• The proposed reconstruction was compared against compressed sensing, and LV function parameters against conventional 2D CINE.

Main Results:

• The framework achieved 3D isotropic cardiac CINE with high spatial resolution (1.9 mm³) and temporal resolution (~50 ms).
• Single breath-hold durations were approximately 20s for LV and 26s for whole-heart coverage in healthy subjects.
• LV function parameters derived from 3D CINE showed good agreement with 2D CINE in both healthy subjects and patients.

Conclusions:

• The proposed framework enables rapid, single-breath-hold 3D isotropic cardiac CINE.
• This approach offers high-quality imaging for LV and whole-heart assessment.
• The results demonstrate good agreement with clinical 2D CINE, supporting its potential clinical utility.