High spatial resolution spiral first-pass myocardial perfusion imaging with whole-heart coverage at 3 T

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Imaging
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• Medical Diagnostics

Background:

• Assessing myocardial perfusion is crucial for diagnosing coronary artery disease.
• Current techniques may lack the spatial resolution to differentiate endocardial and epicardial perfusion.
• High-resolution imaging is needed to quantify ischemic burden accurately.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a high spatial resolution (1.25 × 1.25 mm²) spiral first-pass myocardial perfusion imaging technique.
• To achieve whole-heart coverage at 3T for better transmural perfusion assessment.
• To improve the detection of obstructive coronary artery disease.

Main Methods:

• Developed whole-heart high-resolution spiral perfusion pulse sequences and motion-compensated reconstruction.
• Utilized interleaved single-slice (SS) and simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) acquisitions with or without outer-volume suppression (OVS).
• Reconstructed images using motion-compensated L1-SPIRiT and SMS-Slice-L1-SPIRiT, evaluated in 34 healthy volunteers and 8 patients.

Main Results:

• Achieved high-quality perfusion imaging for both SS and SMS acquisitions.
• The SS technique without OVS received the highest quality scores (4.5 [4, 5]).
• SMS image quality was improved with SMS-Slice-L1-SPIRiT compared to SMS-L1-SPIRiT (P < .05).

Conclusions:

• Successfully implemented whole-heart spiral perfusion imaging with high resolution at 3T.
• The SS technique without OVS demonstrated the best image quality.
• Further evaluation in patients with ischemic heart disease is warranted.