Impact of cardiac arrhythmia on velocity quantification by ECG gated phase contrast MRI

Excerpt

Blood flow quantification using ECG gated phase contrast (PC) MRI has proven to be a useful clinical tool for the evaluation of cardiovascular pathologies such aortic valve disease or cardiac shunts¹. However, data are acquired in an ECG synchronized manner over multiple heart beats and the impact of cardiac arrhythmia, which can frequently be encountered in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF), on flow parameters is unclear. To assess the impact of arrhythmia and thus RR interval variability on ECG-gated PC MRI acquisitions we have performed a simulation study to systematically investigate the impact of beat-to-beat variations on ECG gated multi-beat flow imaging with MRI using real time in-vivo TEE data in 5 AF patients with known arrhythmia. …