Yong Chen

Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting is a novel imaging method for rapid quantitative imaging. This presentation will first cover the basic concepts of Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting and then introduce its extension for cardiac imaging. We will further discuss recent advances in cardiac Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting and the future directions in clinical applications.

Ricardo Otazo

A recent paradigm shift in MRI has seen the capture of multiple dynamic dimensions in a single acquisition. At first glance, adding new dimensions would appear to make MRI more challenging, but recent developments in compressed sensing and low-rank tensor imaging have shown that this multidimensional image structure can be exploited to improve over conventional imaging performance and enable access to new physiological information of clinical interest. This talk will present the most significant developments in this paradigm shift along with relevant clinical applications.

Zhehao Hu^1,2, Anthony G. Christodoulou¹, Nan Wang^1,2, Shlee S. Song³, Marcel M. Maya⁴, Mariko L. Ishimori⁵, Lindsy J. Forbess⁵, Jiayu Xiao¹, Xiaoming Bi⁶, Fei Han⁶, Debiao Li^1,2,7, and Zhaoyang Fan^1,2,7
1Biomedical Imaging Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ²Bioengineering Department, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ³Department of Neurology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ⁴Department of Imaging, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ⁵Department of Rheumatology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ⁶Siemens Healthineers, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ⁷Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Thoracic aortic diseases are one of the most common causes of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, where imaging plays a central role in diagnosis. As a noninvasive technique, MR imaging has the potential to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the thoracic aorta from various aspects. However, clinical adoption of this modality is hindered by several limitations, i.e. long scan time and cumbersome setup for accommodating motion during data acquisition. In this work, we present an MR MultiTasking based 3D Multi-dimensional Assessment of Cardiovascular System (MT-MACS) technique that allows for ECG- and navigator-free thoracic aortic imaging within 6 minutes.

Gastao Cruz¹, Olivier Jaubert¹, Haikun Qi¹, Aurelien Bustin¹, Giorgia Milotta¹, Torben Schneider², Peter Koken³, Mariya Doneva³, René M. Botnar¹, and Claudia Prieto^1
1Biomedical Engineering Department, School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, King's College London, London, United Kingdom, ²Philips Healthcare, Guildford, United Kingdom, ³Philips Research Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

2D cardiac Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting (cMRF) has been proposed for simultaneous and co-registered T1/T2 mapping using ECG-triggering and breath-holding. However, 2D cMRF provides limited coverage of the heart and is sensitive to residual through-plane respiratory motion. Here we propose respiratory motion-compensated 3D cMRF to enable whole-heart myocardial T1/T2 mapping in a single free-breathing scan. Respiratory bellows driven localized autofocus is proposed for beat-to-beat translational motion correction and patch-based low rank MRF reconstruction is employed to minimise residual aliasing. 3D cMRF enabled whole-heart T1/T2 mapping in ~7min scan time with comparable map quality to conventional 2D MOLLI, SASHA and T2-GraSE.

Mohamed Kassem^1,2, Ellen Boswijk², Jochem Van der Pol², Rik PM Moonen², Jan Bucerius², Zhaoyang Fan³, and M Eline Kooi^1,2
1Radiology and Nuclear medicine, CARIM School for Cardiovascular Diseases, Maastricht, Netherlands, ²Radiology and Nuclear medicine, Maastricht university Medical Centre, Maastricht, Netherlands, ³Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Biomedical Imaging Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Multisequence MRI protocol usually includes an MP-RAGE sequence for the identification of plaque compositions. Multisequence MRI has some limitations including long scan time and image mis-registration errors. Multi-contrast Atherosclerosis Characterization (MATCH) was developed to overcome the above limitations. Eighteen patients with ≥2 mm carotid plaques underwent 3.0T carotid MRI including conventional multisequence and MATCH. For the artery-based component detection, excellent agreement was obtained for LRNC, substantial for IPH and slight agreement for calcifications. No significant difference between MATCH and conventional MRI was shown in measurement of volume of LRNC/IPH, IPH, calcifications, percentage wall volume and normalized wall index.
 

Wissam AlGhuraibawi¹, Kevin Godines¹, Mark Velasquez¹, Sinyeob Ahn², Wolfgang Rehwald³, and Moriel Vandsburger^1
1Bioengineering, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, ²Siemens Healthineers, Concord, CA, United States, ³Siemens Healthineers, Durham, NC, United States

CEST-MRI is an emerging molecular imaging method for non-invasive assessment of cardiomyocyte metabolites. In cardiac CEST-MRI, spatial B₁ inhomogeneity across the myocardium significantly reduces the accuracy of measured CEST contrasts. Deviation from the prescribed B₁ leads to altered creatine CEST contrast due to both reduced labeling efficiency and heightened magnetization transfer and direct water direct saturation across the heart. The final impact is measurement of falsely and substantially reduced creatine CEST contrast in the healthy heart.

Liliana Ma^1,2, Jerome Yerly³, Lorenzo Di Sopra³, Davide Piccini^3,4, Rod Passman⁵, Philip Greenland⁵, Daniel Kim^1,2, Matthias Stuber³, and Michael Markl^1,2
1Department of Radiology, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, United States, ²Department of Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States, ³Department of Radiology, Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne (UNIL), Lausanne, Switzerland, ⁴Siemens Healthcare, Lausanne, Switzerland, ⁵Department of Medicine and Preventive Medicine, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, United States

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia and is associated with increased risk of ischemic stroke. Arrhythmic heartbeats in AF may alter atrial flow characteristics and the influence of differences in heart rates on LA 3D hemodynamics has not yet been systematically investigated. Recently, a fully self-gated free-running 5D flow (4D flow+respiration) framework was introduced and validated. The purpose of this study was to expand the 5D flow framework to explore the influence of heart rates on thrombogenic hemodynamic parameters in AF patients.

Jonas Walheim¹, Hannes Dillinger¹, Alexander Gotschy^1,2,3, and Sebastian Kozerke^1
1Institute for Biomedical Engineering, University and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, Zurich, Switzerland, ²Great Ormond Street Hospital, London, United Kingdom, ³Department of Cardiology, University Hospital Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

In-vivo 5D Flow Tensor MRI with multipoint encoding for accurate assessment of Reynolds stresses in the aorta is presented. Based on distributions of turbulence intensity in healthy and pathological flows, a 6-directional multipoint encoding with 3 different encoding strengths is proposed. Using a 5D Flow compressed sensing acquisition in-vivo data are collected in 10 minutes irrespective of breathing motion. Data obtained in aortic valve patients and healthy controls demonstrate the feasibility of the method to quantify turbulence in healthy and pathological flow.