Single breath-hold CINE imaging with combined simultaneous multislice and region-optimized virtual coils

Area of Science:

• Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• Medical Imaging Techniques
• Image Reconstruction

Background:

• Region-optimized virtual coils (ROVir) allow for reduced field-of-view (FOV) imaging by signal localization or suppression.
• Simultaneous multislice (SMS) imaging accelerates MRI acquisition by exciting and acquiring multiple slices concurrently.
• Whole-heart CINE imaging is crucial for cardiac function assessment but traditionally requires longer scan times.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the feasibility of combining SMS and ROVir for single breath-hold CINE imaging.
• To assess the effectiveness of this combined technique in achieving whole-heart coverage within a single breath-hold.
• To determine if the combination of SMS and ROVir impacts image quality and quantitative cardiac function parameters.

Main Methods:

• Implemented ROVir for reduced-FOV bSSFP CINE imaging.
• Combined ROVir with SMS for accelerated whole-heart CINE acquisition.
• Compared image quality and quantitative parameters (end-diastolic volume, end-systolic volume, ejection fraction) against a full-FOV reference.

Main Results:

• SMS+ROVir significantly reduced aliasing artifacts compared to SMS-only or ROVir-only approaches.
• Quantitative cardiac function parameters (EDV, ESV, EF) derived from SMS+ROVir CINE were comparable to the clinical reference.
• High correlations (0.92-0.94) and no statistically significant differences were observed for cardiac function parameters.

Conclusions:

• The combination of SMS and ROVir enables high-quality, single breath-hold whole-heart CINE imaging.
• This technique effectively mitigates aliasing artifacts inherent in reduced-FOV imaging.
• SMS+ROVir maintains diagnostic accuracy for quantitative cardiac function assessment.