Free-running 3D whole-heart T₁ and T₂ mapping and cine MRI using low-rank reconstruction with non-rigid cardiac...

To introduce non-rigid cardiac motion correction into a novel free-running framework for the simultaneous acquisition of 3D whole-heart myocardial $$ and $$ maps and cine images, enabling a $$ 3-min scan.

Data were acquired using a free-running 3D golden-angle radial readout interleaved with inversion recovery and $$ -preparation pulses. After correction for translational respiratory motion, non-rigid cardiac-motion-corrected reconstruction with dictionary-based low-rank compression and patch-based regularization enabled 3D whole-heart $$ and $$ mapping at any given cardiac phase as well as whole-heart cardiac cine imaging. The framework was validated and compared with established methods in 11 healthy subjects.

Good quality 3D $$ and $$ maps and cine images were reconstructed for all subjects. Septal $$ values using the proposed approach ( $$ ms) were higher than those from a 2D MOLLI sequence ( $$ ms), which is known to underestimate $$ , while $$ values from the proposed approach ( $$ ms) were in good agreement with those from a 2D GraSE sequence ( $$ ms).

The proposed technique provides 3D $$ and $$ maps and cine images with isotropic spatial resolution in a single $$ 3.3-min scan.