Fetal 3D cardiovascular cine image acquisition using radial sampling and compressed sensing

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Imaging
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
• Fetal Medicine

Background:

• Fetal cardiac imaging is crucial for diagnosing congenital heart defects.
• Conventional 2D MRI requires complex planning and can be time-consuming.
• Advancements in 3D imaging offer potential for improved visualization and efficiency.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate a novel free-breathing, whole-heart fetal 3D radial cine MRI acquisition technique.
• To compare the image quality and scan time of this 3D method against conventional multislice 2D fetal MRI.
• To assess the feasibility of compressed-sensing reconstruction for fetal cardiac MRI.

Main Methods:

• Utilized a radial 3D balanced SSFP sequence for volumetric fetal cardiac data acquisition in 26 volunteers.
• Employed Doppler ultrasound for cardiac gating and compressed-sensing with parallel imaging for reconstruction.
• Performed multiplanar reformatting for standard cardiac views and compared with clinical 2D images.

Main Results:

• The 3D radial cine MRI had an average scan time of 6 minutes, comparable to or faster than 2D sequences.
• Successful 3D acquisition was achieved in 27% of subjects.
• While 3D images showed lower contrast and resolution, they provided moderate diagnostic quality (median 3/4), with no significant differences in cardiac measurements compared to high-quality 2D images (median 4/4).

Conclusions:

• The developed free-breathing fetal 3D radial cine MRI technique allows retrospective visualization of all cardiac views.
• This method demonstrates diagnostic image quality while simplifying planning to a single localizer and maintaining short examination times.
• This proof-of-concept study highlights the potential of 3D radial MRI for efficient fetal cardiac assessment.