Rapid single-breath-hold 3D late gadolinium enhancement cardiac MRI using a stack-of-spirals acquisition.

Purpose To develop a rapid single-breath-hold 3D late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method, and demonstrate its feasibility in cardiac patients. Materials and Methods An inversion recovery dual-density 3D stack-of-spirals imaging sequence was developed. The spiral acquisition was 2-fold accelerated by self-consistent parallel imaging reconstruction (SPIRiT), which resulted in a total scan time of 12 heartbeats. Field map-based linear off-resonance correction was incorporated to the SPIRiT reconstruction. The 3D spiral LGE scans were performed in 15 patients who were referred for clinically ordered cardiac MR examinations that included the standard 2D multislice LGE imaging. Image sharpness and overall quality were qualitatively assessed based on 5-point scales. Results Scar-induced hyper-LGE was identified in 4 out of the 15 patients by both 3D spiral and 2D multislice LGE tests. On average over all datasets ( n = 15), the image sharpness scores were 3.9 (3D spiral) and 4.0 (2D multislice), and the image quality scores were 4.1 (3D spiral) and 4.0 (2D multislice) with no significant difference in both metrics (paired t-test; P > 0.1). The average scar contrast enhancement ratios were 0.72 and 0.75 in 3D and 2D images, respectively ( n = 4). The average difference of fractional scar volumes measured in 3D and 2D images was 4.3% ( n = 3). Conclusion Stack-of-spiral acquisition combined with non-Cartesian SPIRiT parallel imaging enables rapid 3D LGE MRI in a 12 heartbeat-long breath-hold. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2014;40:1496-1502. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]