Cardiac MRI
Learning objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to:
- List the main difficulties in cardiac MRI
- Present the methods to overcome these
- Explain the principles of ECG gating
- Describe the techniques and results of:
- Morphological and functional cardiac exploration
- Cine phase-contrast velocity mapping
- Myocardial perfusion and late enhancement imaging
- Coronary MR angiography
Key points
| Application | Sequence | Gating | Breath. | Prep | Inj. | Blood | Contr. |
| Morphology | Fast SE with Dark blood preparation | P | H | DB | – | ● | T1, T2 |
| Morphology | UltraFast SE with Dark blood preparation | P | L/A | DB | – | ● | T1, T2 |
| Function | Balanced steady state GE cine sequence ± tagging ± stress | R/P | H/F | ± tagging | ± stress (Dobu tamine) | ○ | T2/T1 |
| Flow | Phase contrast | R/P | H | PE | – | ● + ○ – | Speed (phase) |
| Perfusion | GE-EPI, ultrafast GE or GE with balanced gradients and preparation by saturation recuperation (SR) | P | H/C/F | SR | Gado 1st p. ± stress | ○ | T1 |
| Delayed enhancement | IR/PSIR – ultrafast GE with TI adapted to suppress the signal from the healthy myocardium (IR) or in PSIR technique | P | H | IR PSIR | Delayed Gado | ○ | Healthy myo cardium, T1 |
Gating: P = prospective, R = retrospective
Breathing: H = Breath-hold, F = Free breathing, C = Respiratory compensation
Preparation: DB = Dark Blood, PE = Phase encoding, SR = Saturation Recuperation, IR = Inversion recuperation, PSIR = Phase Sensitive Inversion Recovery
Injection: Dobu = Dobutamine, Adenos. = Adenosine, Gado = Gadolinium chelates
Blood signal: ● = dark blood, ○ = bright blood, ● + = flow moving toward the observer, in black, ○ – = flow moving away from the observer, in white
References
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