The focus of this project is to develop and evaluate a noel and reliable system for ECG triggering during cardiac MR imaging. Understanding the mechanism of heart failure and cardiomyopathy using MRI requires reliable and robust ECG gating (or triggering). To provide effective ECG gating, the first specific aim of this Phase I project is to design and develop an ECG lead system and concomitant signal processing methodology to allow for improved ECG detection with the magnetic. Our preliminary data describing our optimal vector signal set approach , coupled with a dual derivative ECG detections scheme, appear to be effective in reliably detecting the ECG during MR imaging. An improved ECG trigger will provide cardiac MRI imaging without the artifacts of cardiac and respiratory motion. Our second specific aim is to design and develop a wireless (telemetry) infrared (IR) system for ECG trigger transmission to eliminate the need for either wiring or a fiber optic cable during MRI examinations. Additionally preliminary data demonstrates the capability of our IR telemetry system to transmit the ECG in laboratory tests. Our optimal telemetry system will also mitigate against many of the artifacts involved in the development of an effective MRI ECG trigger. During Phase I we will demonstrate the feasibility of our system by evaluating system performance in 20 human subjects undergoing cardiac MR imaging. We believe our approach should provide a reliable and robust ECG gated trigger with minimal delay from the onset of the R-wave. Such a trigger would minimize blurring artifacts from cardiac and respiratory motion and improve MR tagging studies. Should our phase I project be successful, we would develop a real-time implementation of the entire system in an expanded Phase II biomedical engineering and extended clinical study. A successful Phase I and II project would likely receive commercial backing from a major MRI instrument manufacturer.
Potential Commercial applications: Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one of the most promising areas of MRI technology. There is a large potential commercial opportunity to develop a reliable and effective method to provide a real-time ECG gating and an infrared (IR) ECG telemetry link.
