Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in both men arid women. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a highly promising imaging modality for the detection and characterization of CVD. 1 of the major MRI tests that has found widespread clinical application is the dynamic (cine) imaging of cardiovascular morphology and motion for assessment of cardiac function. A major requirement for successful cardiac MRI is to reduce potential image artifacts by compensating the motion of the heart during data acquisition. This has usually been accomplished by electrocardiogram (ECG) gating and breath-holding. ECG gating within the MR scanner is not always reliable or sufficiently sensitive to arrhythmias. Breath-holding is not feasible in all patients and limits image acquisition time therefore limiting temporal and spatial resolution as well as overall image quality. The objective of the project is to improve cardiac MRI by providing more robust cardiac cycle synchronization strategies and eliminating breath-holding. This will be accomplished using self-gating strategies which extract motion information from the imaging data itself. This may potentially allow for cardiac MR imaging in patients that is not feasible using conventional techniques.
The specific aims of the projects are to validate the following hypotheses:
Specific Aim 1 : Self-gating can be used for robust retrospective synchronization of MR cine imaging data to the cardiac cycle with improved arrhythmia rejection capabilities over ECG gatirig.
Specific Aim 2 : Self-gating can be used for synchronization of image acquisition to the respiratory cycle allowing segmented cine MRI while free-breathing.
Specific Aim 3 : Self-gating can be used for free-breathing high resolution 3D whole heart cine MRI.
Specific Aim 4 : Self-gating can be used for prospective synchronization of MR image acquisition to the diastolic phase of the cardiac cycle.
