Free‐breathing motion‐informed locally low‐rank quantitative 3D myocardial perfusion imaging

• Published in: Magnetic resonance in medicine Vol. 88; no. 4; pp. 1575 - 1591
• Main Authors: Hoh, Tobias, Vishnevskiy, Valery, Polacin, Malgorzata, Manka, Robert, Fuetterer, Maximilian, Kozerke, Sebastian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.10.2022
• Subjects: Adenosine; Blood flow; Breathing; Cartesian coordinates; Coronary Circulation; Data acquisition; Flow mapping; Heart rate; Humans; Image reconstruction; Inverse problems; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Motion; Myocardial Perfusion Imaging - methods; Perfusion; Reference systems; Respiration; Variation; myocardial perfusion quantification; compressed sensing; low-rank reconstruction; dual sequence; free-breathing; first-pass myocardial perfusion imaging; 3D perfusion imaging; single bolus
• ISSN: 0740-3194; 1522-2594; 1522-2594
• DOI: 10.1002/mrm.29295

To propose respiratory motion-informed locally low-rank reconstruction (MI-LLR) for robust free-breathing single-bolus quantitative 3D myocardial perfusion CMR imaging. Simulation and in-vivo results are compared to locally low-rank (LLR) and compressed sensing reconstructions (CS) for reference. Data were acquired using a 3D Cartesian pseudo-spiral in-out k-t undersampling scheme (R = 10) and reconstructed using MI-LLR, which encompasses two stages. In the first stage, approximate displacement fields are derived from an initial LLR reconstruction to feed a motion-compensated reference system to a second reconstruction stage, which reduces the rank of the inverse problem. For comparison, data were also reconstructed with LLR and frame-by-frame CS using wavelets as sparsifying transform ( -wavelet). Reconstruction accuracy relative to ground truth was assessed using synthetic data for realistic ranges of breathing motion, heart rates, and SNRs. In-vivo experiments were conducted in healthy subjects at rest and during adenosine stress. Myocardial blood flow (MBF) maps were derived using a Fermi model. Improved uniformity of MBF maps with reduced local variations was achieved with MI-LLR. For rest and stress, intra-volunteer variation of absolute and relative MBF was lower in MI-LLR (±0.17 mL/g/min [26%] and ±1.07 mL/g/min [33%]) versus LLR (±0.19 mL/g/min [28%] and ±1.22 mL/g/min [36%]) and versus -wavelet (±1.17 mL/g/min [113%] and ±6.87 mL/g/min [115%]). At rest, intra-subject MBF variation was reduced significantly with MI-LLR. The combination of pseudo-spiral Cartesian undersampling and dual-stage MI-LLR reconstruction improves free-breathing quantitative 3D myocardial perfusion CMR imaging under rest and stress condition.