Rofo 2008; 180 - A12
DOI: 10.1055/s-2008-1052573

Towards Non Contrast Enhanced Myocardial Perfusion Imaging Using Blood Oxygenation Weighted Fast Spin-Echo at 3.0 T

U Heinrichs 1, T Frauenrath 1, JF Utting 1, 2, T Niendorf 1
  • 1epartment of Diagnostic Radiology
  • 2IZKF-BIOMAT, University of Aachen, Germany

Purpose: In current clinical myocardial perfusion MRI first passage kinetics of a contrast agent bolus are assessed to detect perfusion deficits. Major limitations of these techniques are the need for 1 or 2 R-R interval temporal resolution plus limiting signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), all confining the realizable in-plane resolution to 3–4mm.

Perfusion imaging based on BOLD contrast avoids these constraints but requires appropriate T2*-weighting, conventionally realized by echo planar (EPI) or conventional gradient echo imaging techniques (1). Drawbacks here are the image quality and reproducibility due to EPI's intrinsic sensitivity to B0-inhomogeneities and artifacts due to ventricular blood flow. To overcome these limitations this study examines the use of black blood prepared fast spin echo (FSE) techniques in conjunction with T2*-weighting at 3.0T to generate BOLD weighted images of the myocardium.

Materials and Methods: Volunteer studies were performed at 3.0 Tesla Philips Achieva, using a 32-element cardiac coil array (Philips, Best, Netherlands). Cardiac triggering and navigator gating were applied for cardiac and respiratory motion compensation. Double IR preparation was employed for black ventricular blood preparation. T2*-weighting was achieved by implementing a displaced UFLARE (2, 3) fast spin echo variant using FOV=(35×35)cm2, matrix size=256×256, TE=38ms, TR=2 R-R intervals.

Results: The FSE based BOLD approach yielded high image quality even for strong T2*-weighting. Images were found to be free of distortions due to B0-inhomogeneities and free of motion artifacts due to physiological motion or bulk ventricular blood flow.

Conclusion:These results demonstrate the promise of FSE based cardiac BOLD imaging; potentially obviating the need for contrast agents to study myocardial perfusion and offering the potential for rapid myocardial iron content assessment while avoiding the drawbacks of EPI and gradient echo based approaches.