Published in:
01-06-2016 | Original Paper
Highly accelerated cardiac MRI using iterative SENSE reconstruction: initial clinical experience
Authors:
Bradley D. Allen, Maria Carr, Marcos P. F. Botelho, Amir Ali Rahsepar, Michael Markl, Michael O. Zenge, Michaela Schmidt, Mariappan S. Nadar, Bruce Spottiswoode, Jeremy D. Collins, James C. Carr
Published in:
The International Journal of Cardiovascular Imaging
|
Issue 6/2016
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Abstract
To evaluate the qualitative and quantitative performance of an accelerated cardiovascular MRI (CMR) protocol that features iterative SENSE reconstruction and spatio-temporal L1-regularization (IS SENSE). Twenty consecutively recruited patients and 9 healthy volunteers were included. 2D steady state free precession cine images including 3-chamber, 4-chamber, and short axis slices were acquired using standard parallel imaging (GRAPPA, acceleration factor = 2), spatio-temporal undersampled TSENSE (acceleration factor = 4), and IS SENSE techniques (acceleration factor = 4). Acquisition times, quantitative cardiac functional parameters, wall motion abnormalities (WMA), and qualitative performance (scale: 1-poor to 5-excellent for overall image quality, noise, and artifact) were compared. Breath-hold times for IS SENSE (3.0 ± 0.6 s) and TSENSE (3.3 ± 0.6) were both reduced relative to GRAPPA (8.4 ± 1.7 s, p < 0.001). No difference in quantitative cardiac function was present between the three techniques (p = 0.89 for ejection fraction). GRAPPA and IS SENSE had similar image quality (4.7 ± 0.4 vs. 4.5 ± 0.6, p = 0.09) while, both techniques were superior to TSENSE (quality: 4.1 ± 0.7, p < 0.001). GRAPPA WMA agreement with IS SENSE was good (κ > 0.60, p < 0.001), while agreement with TSENSE was poor (κ < 0.40, p < 0.001). IS SENSE is a viable clinical CMR acceleration approach to reduce acquisition times while maintaining satisfactory qualitative and quantitative performance.