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Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) with cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging is the clinical reference for assessment of myocardial scar and focal fibrosis. However, current LGE techniques are confined to imaging of a single cardiac phase, which hampers assessment of scar motility and does not allow cross-comparison between multiple phases. In this work, we investigate a three step approach to obtain cardiac phase-resolved LGE images: (1) Acquisition of cardiac phase-resolved imaging data with varyingT₁weighting. (2) Generation of semi-quantitative ${\text{T}}_{\text{1}}^{\text{*}}$maps for each cardiac phase. (3) Synthetization of LGE contrast to obtain functional LGE images. The proposed method is evaluated in phantom imaging, six healthy subjects at 3T and 20 patients at 1.5T. Phantom imaging at 3T demonstrates consistent contrast throughout the cardiac cycle with a coefficient of variation of 2.55 ± 0.42%.In-vivoresults show reliable LGE contrast with thorough suppression of the myocardial tissue is healthy subjects. The contrast between blood and myocardium showed moderate variation throughout the cardiac cycle in healthy subjects (coefficient of variation 18.2 ± 3.51%). Images were acquired at 40–60 ms and 80 ms temporal resolution, at 3T and 1.5, respectively. Functional LGE images acquired in patients with myocardial scar visualized scar tissue throughout the cardiac cycle, albeit at noticeably lower imaging resolution and noise resilience than the reference technique. The proposed technique bears the promise of integrating the advantages of phase-resolved CMR with LGE imaging, but further improvements in the acquisition quality are warranted for clinical use. 

PurposeTo develop and evaluate a cardiac phase‐resolved myocardial T₁mapping sequence. MethodsThe proposed method for temporally resolved parametric assessment of Z‐magnetization recovery (TOPAZ) is based on contiguous fast low‐angle shot imaging readout after magnetization inversion from the pulsed steady state. Thereby, segmented k‐space data are acquired over multiple heartbeats, before reaching steady state. This results in sampling of the inversion‐recovery curve for each heart phase at multiple points separated by an R‐R interval. Joint T₁andestimation is performed for reconstruction of cardiac phase‐resolved T₁andmaps. Sequence parameters are optimized using numerical simulations. Phantom and in vivo imaging are performed to compare the proposed sequence to a spin‐echo reference and saturation pulse prepared heart rate–independent inversion‐recovery (SAPPHIRE) T₁mapping sequence in terms of accuracy and precision. ResultsIn phantom, TOPAZ T₁values with integratedcorrection are in good agreement with spin‐echo T₁values (normalized root mean square error = 4.2%) and consistent across the cardiac cycle (coefficient of variation = 1.4 ± 0.78%) and different heart rates (coefficient of variation = 1.2 ± 1.9%). In vivo imaging shows no significant difference in TOPAZ T₁times between the cardiac phases (analysis of variance:P = 0.14, coefficient of variation = 3.2 ± 0.8%), but underestimation compared with SAPPHIRE (T₁time ± precision: 1431 ± 56 ms versus 1569 ± 65 ms). In vivo precision is comparable to SAPPHIRE T₁mapping until middiastole (P > 0.07), but deteriorates in the later phases. ConclusionsThe proposed sequence allows cardiac phase‐resolved T₁mapping with integratedassessment at a temporal resolution of 40 ms. Magn Reson Med 79:2087–2100, 2018. © 2017 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.