Abstract PurposeTo determine the feasibility of simultaneous multi‐slice (SMS) real‐time MRI (RT‐MRI) at 0.55T for the evaluation of cardiac function. MethodsCardiac CINE MRI is routinely used to evaluate left‐ventricular (LV) function. The standard is sequential multi‐slice balanced SSFP (bSSFP) over a stack of short‐axis slices using electrocardiogram (ECG) gating and breath‐holds. SMS has been used in CINE imaging to reduce the number of breath‐holds by a factor of 2–4 at 1.5T, 3T, and recently at 0.55T. This work aims to determine if SMS is similarly effective in the RT‐MRI evaluation of cardiac function. We used an SMS bSSFP pulse sequence with golden‐angle spirals at 0.55T with an SMS factor of three. We cover the LV with three acquisitions for SMS, and nine for single‐band (SB). Imaging was performed on 9 healthy volunteers and 1 patient with myocardial fibrosis and sternal wires. A spatio‐temporal constrained reconstruction is used, with regularization parameters selected by a board‐certified cardiologist. Images were quantitatively analyzed with a normalized contrast and an Edge Sharpness (ES) score. ResultsThere was a statistically significant 2‐fold difference in contrast between SMS and SB and no significant difference in ES score. The contrast for SMS and SB were 13.38/29.05 at mid‐diastole and 10.79/22.26 at end‐systole; the ES scores for SMS and SB were 1.77/1.83 at mid‐diastole and 1.50/1.72 at end‐systole. ConclusionsSMS cardiac RT‐MRI at 0.55T is feasible and provides sufficient blood‐myocardium contrast to evaluate LV function in three slices simultaneously without any gating or periodic motion assumptions.
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Evaluating Passive Myocardial Stiffness Using in vivo cine, cDTI, and Tagged MRI
Increased passive myocardial stiffness is implicated in the pathophysiology of many cardiac diseases, and its in vivo estimation can improve management of heart disease. MRI-driven computational constitutive modeling has been used extensively to evaluate passive myocardial stiffness. This approach requires subject-specific data that is best acquired with different MRI sequences: conventional cine (e.g. bSSFP), tagged MRI (or DENSE), and cardiac diffusion tensor imaging. However, due to the lack of comprehensive datasets and the challenge of incorporating multi-phase and single-phase disparate MRI data, no studies have combined in vivo cine bSSFP, tagged MRI, and cardiac diffusion tensor imaging to estimate passive myocardial stiffness. The objective of this work was to develop a personalized in silico left ventricular model to evaluate passive myocardial stiffness by integrating subject-specific geometric data derived from cine bSSFP, regional kinematics extracted from tagged MRI, and myocardial microstructure measured using in vivo cardiac diffusion tensor imaging. To demonstrate the feasibility of using a complete subject-specific imaging dataset for passive myocardial stiffness estimation, we calibrated a bulk stiffness parameter of a transversely isotropic exponential constitutive relation to match the local kinematic field extracted from tagged MRI. This work establishes a pipeline for developing subject-specific biomechanical ventricular models to probe passive myocardial mechanical behavior, using comprehensive cardiac imaging data from multiple in vivo MRI sequences.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2205103
- PAR ID:
- 10447284
- Editor(s):
- Bernard, O.; Clarysse, P.; Duchateau, N.; Ohayon, J.; Viallon, M
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Functional Imaging and Modeling of the Heart. FIMH 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
- Volume:
- 13958
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 527-536
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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