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Updated: Oct 7, 2025
3D Whole-heart Myocardial Tissue Analysis
Published on: April 12, 2017
Sparse 3D contrast-enhanced whole-heart imaging for coronary artery evaluation
Uzair Ansari1,2,3, Sonja Janssen4, Stefan Baumann5,6,7
1First Department of Medicine, University Medical Center Mannheim, Faculty of Medicine Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Theodor-Kutzer-Ufer 1-3, 68167, Mannheim, Germany. uzair.ansari@umm.de.
Background:
We investigated the feasibility of evaluating coronary arteries with a contrast-enhanced (CE) self-navigated sparse isotropic 3D whole heart T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study sequence.
Methods:
A total of 22 consecutive patients underwent coronary angiography and/or cardiac computed tomography (CT) including cardiac MRI. The image quality was evaluated on a 3-point Likert scale. Inter-reader variability for image quality was analyzed with Cohen's kappa for the main coronary segments (left circumflex [LCX], left anterior descending [LAD], right coronary artery [RCA]) and the left main trunk (LMT).
Results:
Inter-reader agreement for image quality of the coronary tree ranged from substantial to perfect, with a Cohen's kappa of 0.722 (RCAmid) to 1 (LCXprox). The LMT had the best image quality. Image quality of the proximal vessel segments differed significantly from the mid- and distal segments (RCAprox vs. RCAdist, p < 0.05). The LCX segments showed no significant difference in image quality along the vessel length (LCXprox vs. LCXdist, p = n.s.). The mean acquisition time for the study sequence was 553 s (±46 s).
Conclusion:
Coronary imaging with a sparse 3D whole-heart sequence is feasible in a reasonable amount of time producing good-quality imaging. Image quality was poorer in distal coronary segments and along the entire course of the LCX.
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