Whole‐heart spiral simultaneous multi‐slice first‐pass myocardial perfusion imaging

• Published in: Magnetic resonance in medicine Vol. 81; no. 2; pp. 852 - 862
• Main Authors: Yang, Yang, Meyer, Craig H., Epstein, Frederick H., Kramer, Christopher M., Salerno, Michael
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.02.2019
• Subjects: Adult; Algorithms; Aliasing; Arrhythmias, Cardiac - diagnostic imaging; Atrial Fibrillation - diagnostic imaging; Cardiomyopathies - diagnostic imaging; Cardiomyopathy, Hypertrophic - diagnostic imaging; Computer Simulation; Data acquisition; Female; first‐pass perfusion; Heart; Heart - diagnostic imaging; Humans; Image acquisition; Image Enhancement - methods; Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted - methods; Image quality; Image reconstruction; Middle Aged; Myocardial Infarction - diagnostic imaging; Myocardial Perfusion Imaging; Myocarditis - diagnostic imaging; Observer Variation; Perfusion; Pericardium - diagnostic imaging; Point spread functions; Quality; Reproducibility of Results; Retrospective Studies; Sampling; simultaneous multislice; spiral trajectory; Tachycardia, Ventricular - diagnostic imaging; Ventricular Dysfunction, Right - diagnostic imaging; Ventricular Premature Complexes - diagnostic imaging; first-pass perfusion; simultaneous multislice; spiral trajectory
• ISSN: 0740-3194; 1522-2594; 1522-2594
• DOI: 10.1002/mrm.27412

Purpose To develop and evaluate a simultaneous multislice (SMS) spiral perfusion pulse sequence with whole‐heart coverage. Methods An orthogonal set of phase cycling angles following a Hadamard pattern was incorporated into a golden‐angle (GA) variable density spiral perfusion sequence to perform SMS imaging at different multiband (MB) factors. Images were reconstructed using an SMS extension of L1‐SPIRiT that we have termed SMS‐L1‐SPIRiT. The proposed sequence was evaluated in 40 subjects (10 each for MB factors of 1, 2, 3, and 4). Images were blindly graded by 2 cardiologists on a 5‐point scale (5, excellent). To quantitatively evaluate the reconstruction performance against images acquired without SMS, the MB =1 data were used to retrospectively simulate data acquired at MB factors of 2 to 4. Results Analysis of the SMS point‐spread function for the desired slice showed that the proposed sampling strategy significantly canceled the main‐lobe energy of the other slices and has low side‐lobe energy resulting in an incoherent temporal aliasing pattern when rotated by the GA. Retrospective experiments demonstrated the SMS‐L1‐SPIRiT method removed aliasing from the interfering slices and showed excellent agreement with the ground‐truth MB =1 images. Clinical evaluation demonstrated high‐quality perfusion images with average image‐quality scores of 4.3 ± 0.5 (MB =2), 4.2 ± 0.5 (MB =3), and 4.4 ± 0.4 (MB =4) with no significant quality difference in image quality between MB factors (P = 0.38). Conclusion SMS spiral perfusion at MB factors 2, 3, and 4 produces high‐quality perfusion images with whole‐heart coverage in a clinical setting with high sampling efficiency.