Accelerated real-time cine and flow under in-magnet staged exercise

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging is a well-established imaging tool for diagnosing and managing cardiac conditions. The integration of exercise stress with CMR (ExCMR) can enhance its diagnostic capacity. Despite recent advances in CMR technology, quantitative ExCMR during exercise remains technically challenging due to motion artifacts and limited spatial and temporal resolution.

This study investigated the feasibility of biventricular functional and hemodynamic assessment using real-time (RT) ExCMR during a staged exercise protocol in 24 healthy volunteers. We employed high acceleration rates and applied a coil-reweighting technique to minimize motion blurring and artifacts. We further applied a beat-selection technique that identified beats from the end-expiratory phase to minimize the impact of respiration-induced through-plane motion on cardiac function quantification. Additionally, results from six patients were presented to demonstrate clinical feasibility.

Our findings indicated a consistent decrease in end-systolic volume and stable end-diastolic volume across exercise intensities, leading to increased stroke volume and ejection fraction. The selection of end-expiratory beats modestly enhanced the repeatability of cardiac function parameters, as shown by scan-rescan tests in nine volunteers. High scores from a blinded image quality assessment indicated that coil reweighting effectively minimized motion artifacts.

This study demonstrated the feasibility of RT ExCMR with in-magnet exercise in healthy subjects and patients. Our results indicate that high acceleration rates, coil reweighting, and selection of respiratory phase-specific heartbeats enhance image quality and repeatability of quantitative RT ExCMR.