Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 24, 2026
Quantification of Mouse Heart Left Ventricular Function, Myocardial Strain, and Hemodynamic Forces by Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Published on: May 24, 2021
Evaluation of Third-Order Motion-Compensated Cardiac Diffusion Tensor Imaging Across Cardiac Phases Using an
Ke Wen1,2,3, Pedro F Ferreira1,2, Alberto Di Biase Oemick2,4
1National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, London, UK.
Purpose:
To evaluate a third-order motion-compensated spin echo (M3-MCSE) sequence at multiple cardiac phases on a clinical 3 T MRI scanner with ultra-high performance (UHP) gradients (200 mT/m), compared with stimulated echo acquisition mode (STEAM) and second-order MCSE (M2-MCSE) for cardiac diffusion tensor imaging (cDTI).
Methods:
Twenty healthy subjects underwent mid-ventricular short-axis cDTI at peak systole and diastasis using STEAM, M2-MCSE, and M3-MCSE. cDTI metrics and image quality were compared. In five additional healthy subjects, diffusion-weighted images were obtained at multiple trigger delays distributed over diastasis to assess motion-induced signal loss.
Results:
Compared to M2-MCSE, M3-MCSE yielded higher systolic helix angle map scores ( ) but lower diastolic scores ( ), with no significant difference in mean diffusivity, fractional anisotropy, helix angle transmurality or sheetlet angle in systole/diastole. STEAM-derived apparent diffusion coefficients (ADC) were consistent across diastasis, while ADC for MCSE sequences increased at sub-optimal trigger delays.
Conclusion:
UHP gradients enabled in vivo evaluation of M3-MCSE, showing superior systolic cDTI but reduced diastolic performance versus M2-MCSE due to reduced signal-to-noise ratio and a longer motion-sensitive window. Future work may consider numerically optimized gradient designs to enhance MCSE robustness throughout the cardiac cycle.
