Functional imaging of murine hearts using accelerated self-gated UTE cine MRI

  • Abdallah G. Motaal
  • Nils Noorman
  • Wolter L. de Graaf
  • Verena Hoerr
  • Luc M. J. Florack
  • Klaas Nicolay
  • Gustav J. Strijkers
Original Paper
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

We introduce a fast protocol for ultra-short echo time (UTE) Cine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the beating murine heart. The sequence involves a self-gated UTE with golden-angle radial acquisition and compressed sensing reconstruction. The self-gated acquisition is performed asynchronously with the heartbeat, resulting in a randomly undersampled kt-space that facilitates compressed sensing reconstruction. The sequence was tested in 4 healthy rats and 4 rats with chronic myocardial infarction, approximately 2 months after surgery. As a control, a non-accelerated self-gated multi-slice FLASH sequence with an echo time (TE) of 2.76 ms, 4.5 signal averages, a matrix of 192 × 192, and an acquisition time of 2 min 34 s per slice was used to obtain Cine MRI with 15 frames per heartbeat. Non-accelerated UTE MRI was performed with TE = 0.29 ms, a reconstruction matrix of 192 × 192, and an acquisition time of 3 min 47 s per slice for 3.5 averages. Accelerated imaging with 2×, 4× and 5× undersampled kt-space data was performed with 1 min, 30 and 15 s acquisitions, respectively. UTE Cine images up to 5× undersampled kt-space data could be successfully reconstructed using a compressed sensing algorithm. In contrast to the FLASH Cine images, flow artifacts in the UTE images were nearly absent due to the short echo time, simplifying segmentation of the left ventricular (LV) lumen. LV functional parameters derived from the control and the accelerated Cine movies were statistically identical.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords

Compressed sensing UTE Cardiac MRI Functional imaging 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

We thank Leonie Niesen for biotechnical assistance.

Conflict of interest

None.

Supplementary material

10554_2014_531_MOESM1_ESM.gif (1.6 mb)
Supplementary material 1 Comparison between FLASH and UTE Cine movie of a mid-ventricular short axis slice with 15 cardiac time frames (standard.gif) (GIF 1596 kb)
10554_2014_531_MOESM2_ESM.gif (876 kb)
Supplementary material 2 Mid-ventricular short-axis Cine movie of a healthy rat heart with 15 frames obtained from a 4X undersampled acquisition and compressed sensing reconstruction (shortaxes4x.gif) (GIF 876 kb)
10554_2014_531_MOESM3_ESM.gif (840 kb)
Supplementary material 3 Mid-ventricular short-axis Cine movie of a rat heart with myocardial infarction with 15 frames obtained from a 5X undersampled acquisition and compressed sensing reconstruction (shortaxes5x.gif) (GIF 840 kb)

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Authors and Affiliations

  • Abdallah G. Motaal
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
  • Nils Noorman
    • 1
    • 2
  • Wolter L. de Graaf
    • 1
    • 2
  • Verena Hoerr
    • 4
  • Luc M. J. Florack
    • 3
  • Klaas Nicolay
    • 1
    • 2
  • Gustav J. Strijkers
    • 1
    • 2
    • 5
  1. 1.Biomedical NMR, Department of Biomedical EngineeringEindhoven University of TechnologyEindhovenThe Netherlands
  2. 2.Center for Imaging Research and Education (CIRE)EindhovenThe Netherlands
  3. 3.Department of Mathematics and Computer ScienceEindhoven University of TechnologyEindhovenThe Netherlands
  4. 4.Department of Clinical RadiologyUniversity Hospital of MünsterMünsterGermany
  5. 5.Department of Biomedical Engineering and PhysicsAcademic Medical CenterAmsterdamThe Netherlands

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