Accelerated aortic 4D flow MRI with wave-CAIPI

The aim of this study was to investigate the acceleration potential of wave-CAIPI (controlled aliasing in parallel imaging) for 4D flow MRI, provided that image quality and precision of flow parameters are maintained.

The 4D flow MRIs with acceleration factor R = 2 were performed on 10 healthy volunteers, using both wave-CAIPI and standard Cartesian/2D-CAIPI sampling for reference. In addition, 1 patient with known aortic valve stenosis was examined. The flow rate ( $$ ), net flow ( $$ ), peak velocity $$ , and net average through-plane velocity ( $$ ) were calculated in eight analysis planes in the ascending and descending aorta. The acquisitions were retrospectively undersampled (R = 6), and deviations of flow parameters and hemodynamic flow patterns were evaluated.

Flow parameters measured with an undersampled wave-CAIPI trajectory showed considerably smaller deviations to the references than the 2D-CAIPI images. For $$ , the mean absolute differences were $$ cm/s versus $$ cm/s; for $$ , the mean absolute differences were $$ ml versus $$ ml for wave-CAIPI versus 2D-CAIPI, respectively. Noise calculations indicate that the 2D-CAIPI sampling exhibits a $$ higher average noise level than the wave-CAIPI technique. Qualitative discrepancies in hemodynamic flow patterns, visualized through streamlines, particle traces and flow velocity vectors, could be reduced by using the undersampled wave-CAIPI trajectory.

Use of wave-CAIPI instead of 2D-CAIPI sampling in retrospectively 6-fold accelerated 4D flow MRI enhances the precision of flow parameters. The acquisition time of 4D flow measurements could be reduced by a factor of 3, with minimal differences in flow parameters.