Highly Accelerated Real-Time Free-Breathing Cine CMR for Patients With a Cardiac Implantable Electronic Device

To develop a 16-fold accelerated real-time, free-breathing cine cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) pulse sequence with compressed sensing reconstruction and test whether it is capable of producing clinically acceptable summed visual scores (SVS) and accurate left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) in patients with a cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED).

A 16-fold accelerated real-time cine CMR pulse sequence was developed using gradient echo readout, Cartesian k-space sampling, and compressed sensing. We scanned 13 CIED patients (mean age = 59 years; 9/4 males/females) using clinical standard, breath-hold cine and real-time, free-breathing cine. Two clinical readers performed a visual assessment of image quality in four categories (conspicuity of endocardial wall at end diastole, temporal fidelity of wall motion, any artifact level on the heart, noise) using a five-point Likert scale (1: worst; 3: clinically acceptable; 5: best). SVS was calculated as the sum of 4 individual scores, where 12 was defined as clinical acceptable. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was performed to compare SVS, and the Bland-Altman analysis was conducted to evaluate the agreement of LVEF.

Median scan time was 3.7 times shorter for real-time (3.5 heartbeats per slice) than clinical standard (13 heartbeats per slice, excluding nonscanning time between successive breath-hold acquisitions). Median SVS was not significantly different between clinical standard (15.0) and real-time (14.5). The mean difference in LVEF was -2% (4.7% of mean), and the limits of agreement was 5.8% (13.5% of mean).

This study demonstrates that the proposed real-time cine method produces clinically acceptable SVS and relatively accurate LVEF in CIED patients.