Abstract

(from Abstract): The broad objective of this research is to develop fast coronary magnetic resonance angiography (CMRA) techniques that can reliably image small coronary arteries. Technical advances proposed in this research seek to achieve 1 mm resolution, the size of significant coronary stenoses. Three criteria are identified for 1 mm (CMRA: 1) The motion induced point-spread-function (PSF) size has to be < 1 mm; 2) The signal-to-noise ratio has to meet the Rose Model criterion; 3) The voxel size has to be < 1 mm. These three criteria will be satisfied through four specific aims.
Aim 1. Develop cardiac motion prescan.
Aim 2. Develop efficient spiral data acquisition.
Aim 3. Develop integrated navigator techniques for suppressing both cardiac and respiratory motion effects.
Aim 4. Implement and test contrast enhanced navigator spiral CMRA in an animal model. Imaging artifacts from cardiac and respiratory motion continue to be the major challenge for CMRA. Motion blurring has to be reduced to < 1 mm for accurate imaging of significant coronary stenoses. Cardiac contraction motion will be estimated using M-mode navigator echoes. All components of respiratory motion will be measured using hybrid navigator echoes. A k-space time approach for motion reduction is proposed in this research. This k-space time approach allows synergistic integration of existing and new motion suppression methods including gating, view ordering and signal correction. Effects of both cardiac and respiratory motion will be suppressed simultaneously and effectively using this integrated method. T1-shortening contrast agent can substantially increase MR signal of blood, generating reliable vascular contrast free from flow-related artifacts. Contrast enhancement will be used to improve SNR and shorten scan time of CMRA. Efficient spiral acquisition will be developed to minimize scan time and optimize signal-to-noise ratio. Navigator based contrast enhanced CMRA will be developed via imaging the recirculation of an intravascular gadolinium agent. CMRA techniques will be evaluated on appropriate in vitro and in vivo models as they are developed. Successful development of this research will result in a motion-resistant 1 mm resolution CMRA technique with adequate SNR and reasonable scan time, allowing reliable imaging of significant coronary stenoses.

  Funding Agency

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
7R01HL062994-03
Application #
6527342
Study Section
Diagnostic Radiology Study Section (RNM)
Program Officer
Dunn, Rosalie
Project Start
2000-09-30
Project End
2004-07-31
Budget Start
2002-08-01
Budget End
2003-07-31
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
2002
Total Cost
$298,917
Indirect Cost

  Institution

Name
University of Pittsburgh
Department
Radiation-Diagnostic/Oncology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
053785812
City
Pittsburgh
State
PA
Country
United States
Zip Code
15213

  Publications

Liu, Jing; Nguyen, Thanh D; Zhu, Yanchun et al. (2014) Self-gated free-breathing 3D coronary CINE imaging with simultaneous water and fat visualization. PLoS One 9:e89315
Cooper, Mitchell A; Nguyen, Thanh D; Spincemaille, Pascal et al. (2012) Flip angle profile correction for T? and T? quantification with look-locker inversion recovery 2D steady-state free precession imaging. Magn Reson Med 68:1579-85
Liu, Tian; Khalidov, Ildar; de Rochefort, Ludovic et al. (2011) A novel background field removal method for MRI using projection onto dipole fields (PDF). NMR Biomed 24:1129-36
Singh, Gurmeet; Raj, Ashish; Kressler, Bryan et al. (2011) A fast Edge-preserving Bayesian reconstruction method for Parallel Imaging applications in cardiac MRI. Magn Reson Med 65:184-9
Spincemaille, Pascal; Liu, Jing; Nguyen, Thanh et al. (2011) Z intensity-weighted position self-respiratory gating method for free-breathing 3D cardiac CINE imaging. Magn Reson Imaging 29:861-8
Codella, Noel C F; Spincemaille, Pascal; Prince, Martin et al. (2011) A radial self-calibrated (RASCAL) generalized autocalibrating partially parallel acquisition (GRAPPA) method using weight interpolation. NMR Biomed 24:844-54
Brown, Ryan; Nguyen, Thanh D; Spincemaille, Pascal et al. (2010) Effect of blood flow on double inversion recovery vessel wall MRI of the peripheral arteries: quantitation with T2 mapping and comparison with flow-insensitive T2-prepared inversion recovery imaging. Magn Reson Med 63:736-44
Kressler, Bryan; de Rochefort, Ludovic; Liu, Tian et al. (2010) Nonlinear regularization for per voxel estimation of magnetic susceptibility distributions from MRI field maps. IEEE Trans Med Imaging 29:273-81
Nguyen, Thanh D; Spincemaille, Pascal; Cham, Matthew D et al. (2009) Free-breathing 3-dimensional steady-state free precession coronary magnetic resonance angiography: comparison of four navigator gating techniques. Magn Reson Imaging 27:807-14
Nguyen, Thanh D; Spincemaille, Pascal; Cham, Matthew D et al. (2008) Free-breathing 3D steady-state free precession coronary magnetic resonance angiography: comparison of diaphragm and cardiac fat navigators. J Magn Reson Imaging 28:509-14

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