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Self‐tracking of contrast kinetics for automatic triggering of contrast‐enhanced whole‐heart coronary magnetic resonance angiography
Author(s) -
Bhat Himanshu,
Lai Peng,
Li Debiao
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of magnetic resonance imaging
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.563
H-Index - 160
eISSN - 1522-2586
pISSN - 1053-1807
DOI - 10.1002/jmri.21705
Subject(s) - contrast (vision) , computer science , magnetic resonance imaging , coronary arteries , data acquisition , magnetic resonance angiography , projection (relational algebra) , signal (programming language) , artery , biomedical engineering , computer vision , medicine , radiology , algorithm , cardiology , programming language , operating system
Purpose To develop a method for automatically triggering centric data acquisition during contrast‐enhanced whole‐heart coronary magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). Materials and Methods The hypothesis of this work is that the blood signal changes during contrast infusion can be estimated by obtaining a projection of the heart during inversion‐recovery prepared data acquisition. A validation study was performed on seven healthy volunteers to test this hypothesis. The peak blood signal enhancement detected from the projection was then used to automatically trigger the start of central k‐space data acquisition. Simulations were performed to compare the signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) of the proposed self‐triggering method with the fixed delay method. Six healthy volunteers were scanned on a 3T MR system using the proposed self‐triggered method to test its effectiveness on coronary artery visualization. Results Based on the validation study, the self‐triggering method provides an accurate representation of the contrast enhancement. Based on the simulations, self‐triggering with centric ordering is expected to give a 27% higher SNR than linear ordering with a fixed imaging delay. Self‐triggering was successfully used in all volunteers and showed excellent depiction of the major coronary arteries. Conclusion The self‐triggering method can be used to automatically determine the optimal delay time for central k‐space acquisition, for each individual subject, without the need of any extra setup or user interaction. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2009;29:809–816. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.