Mehdi Hedjazi Moghari1,2, Jonathan I Tamir 3, John Axerio-Cilies3, Tal Geva1,4, and Andrew J Powell1,4
1Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, 2Cardiology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, United States, 3Arterys, San Francisco, CA, United States, 4Cardiology, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, United States
Synopsis
We developed and
evaluated a variable density Poisson disc undersampling technique and
compressed sensing image reconstruction algorithm for free-breathing 3D cine steady-state
free precession whole-heart imaging. In 10 patients, we found good agreement
between 3D cine and conventional breath-hold 2D cine imaging measurements of
ventricular volumes. Introduction
Steady-state
free precession (SSFP) cine imaging is the method of choice for evaluating
ventricular size and function because of its short repetition time, high
signal-to-noise ratio, and excellent blood-to-myocardium contrast [1]. The
standard clinical approach uses a retrospective ECG-gated 2D segmented
Cartesian SSFP sequence that acquires 1-2 slices per breath-hold. The technique
is, however, vulnerable to misregistration error due to variations in
breath-holding position [2] and requires operator-dependent planning. Recent
advances in acceleration techniques have led to single breath-hold whole-heart
3D cine acquisitions [3]. However, the limited duration of a single breath-hold
requires compromises in spatiotemporal resolution and anatomic coverage. To
address this, we combined the recently developed respiratory motion
compensation algorithm (Cine-Nav) with a Cartesian variable density Poisson
disc undersampling pattern and compressed sensing (CS) reconstruction [4].
Materials and Methods
The
schematic diagram of Cine-Nav for the free-breathing,
whole-heart 3D cine SSFP acquisition is shown in Fig. 1. Two pencil-beam
navigators (NAVs) are performed during each beat to monitor the respiratory
motion of the right hemidiaphragm (RHD). If the RHD position of NAV2 is within
the acceptance window and greater than NAV1, the next beat is used for data
acquisition. NAV1 is then performed at the conclusion of the beat, and, if it
is within the acceptance window, the acquired data is accepted for image
reconstruction. To reduce the scan time while maintaining a high spatiotemporal
resolution, a new variable density Poisson disc undersampling pattern is generated
for each cardiac phase. The sampling rate decreases exponentially, from fully
sampled at the k-space center to 16-18% sampled at the k-space periphery (Fig.
2). After the acquisition, the data were retrospectively binned into 20 cardiac
phases and a 4D k-space dataset was reconstructed. A non-linear CS
reconstruction was performed using BART [4, 5]. The data were first
coil-compressed to 12 virtual channels using geometric coil compression [6].
The fully sampled central 2% of k-space at each cardiac phase was averaged and
used to estimate ESPIRiT coil sensitivities [7]. An IFFT was performed in the
fully sampled readout direction, and the data were reconstructed slice-by-slice
and regularized with spatial wavelets and temporal finite-differences. The
reconstruction was then interpolated to 30 time points. To assess the utility
of the proposed sequence, 10 patients (4 males; age 19±9 years) with informed
consent underwent the proposed free-breathing 3D cine acquisition on a 1.5 T MR
scanner (Philips Ingenia). The imaging parameters were FOV ≈240(SI)×240(AP)×150(RL)
mm, isotropic spatial resolution 1.8-2.0 mm
3; α/TE/TR 60°/1.52/3.0 ms,
acquired heart phases 20, bandwidth ≈1.78 kHz, acceptance window of 10 mm and a
tracking factor of 0.6, a 28-element phased-array coil, and a CS reduction
factor of ≈6. The 3D cine
datasets were analyzed using Arterys software to measure left and right ventricular end-diastolic (EDV), end-systolic
(ESV), stroke volume (SV), and ejection
fraction (EF) (Fig. 3). These
measurements were then compared with those from a conventional multiple breath-hold
2D slice cine acquisition with the following parameters: FOV ≈270(SI)×270(RL)×107(AP) mm, spatial
resolution 1.8×1.8×8 mm; slice gap 1 mm, α/TE/TR 60°/1.4/2.8 ms, acquired heart
phases 20 and interpolated to 30, bandwidth ≈1.08 kHz, and SENSE with reduction
factor of ≈2. A paired two-tailed Student’s t-test was used for the statistical analysis and
a p-value ≤0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results
Fig. 4 shows representative
3D cine images acquired from 2 patients. EDV, ESV, SV, and EF by 3D cine acquisition
were not significantly different compared to the conventional 2D cine breath-hold
technique (Table 1). Mean scan time for the 3D cine acquisition was 7.5±0.6 minutes.
The mean image reconstruction time was 107 minutes on a standard r3.4xlarge
Amazon EC2 instance.
Conclusions
We developed a free-breathing 3D cine whole-heart acquisition accelerated with variable density Poisson disc undersampling that yielded similar
measurements of ventricular volumes compared to a conventional 2D breath-hold approach.
Future work will further optimize and expand this approach so as to reduce scan
time, reconstruction time, and operator dependence.
Acknowledgements
Authors acknowledge support from Translational Research Program (TRP) fellowship
and office of faculty development from Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard
Catalyst from
Harvard Medical School.
References
[1] Nezafat,
JMRI, 2008; [2] Liu, JMRI, 2010; [3] Huber,
MRI, 2008; [4] Lustig M et al., MRM 58:1182–1195 (2007); [5] BART (2015) DOI:
10.5281/zenodo.31907; [6] Zhang T et al., MRM 69:571–582 (2013); [7] Uecker, MRM, 2014.