Mengyue Han¹, Jian Wang¹, Jian Yao¹, Xiao Du¹, Ruopeng Wang¹, Tiantian Yang¹, Zheng Jing¹, Yingcui Zhu¹, Baijie Li¹, Chenglin Xu¹, Deyue Yan¹, and Xiuzheng Yue^2
1Central Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, Jinan, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

Keywords: Heart, Cardiovascular

Non-contrast-enhanced whole-heart coronary MRA(NCMRA) is a noninvasive modality for the detection of coronary artery disease.  3D-mDixon with compressed SENSE has been used in clinical practices but was limited to its scanning time of approximately 5-15 minutes. The EPI technique could shorten the scan time in MRI acquisition. The study aimed to evaluate the image quality of single breath-hold TFE-EPI NCMRA and 3D-mDIXON NCMRA with compression SENSE in healthy volunteers. The results showed there was no significant difference in image contrast between the LM, RCA proximal, and LAD proximal. The single breath-hold TFE-EPI sequence might have its own unique advantages.

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Camilla Giulia Calastra¹, Fabian Haupt¹, Elena Kleban¹, Adrian Huber¹, Daniel Becker ², Hendrik von-Tengg Kobligk¹, and Bernd Jung^1
1DIPR (Department of Interventional and Pediatric Radiology), Inselspital, Bern, Switzerland, ²Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Inselspital, Bern, Switzerland

Keywords: Vessels, Cardiovascular, Magnetic Resonance Angiography

This work compares the application of two magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) sequences on an aortic dissection patient cohort: the conventional cartesian-sampling-based, TWIST sequence, and the new radial-sampling-based GRASP sequence. The 1.5T MRA data from six patients with aortic dissection were assessed qualitatively and quantitatively to investigate overall image quality and spatial and temporal blurring. GRASP outperformed TWIST in temporal SNR, vessel sharpness and reduction in image blurring; streaking artifacts were clearly visible, but did not affect the diagnostic image quality.

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Carlos Castillo-Passi^1,2,3, Michael G. Crabb¹, Camila Muñoz¹, Donovan Tripp¹, Karl P. Kunze^1,4, Radhouene Neji ^1,4, Pablo Irarrazaval^2,3,5, Claudia Prieto^1,3,5, and Rene M. Botnar^1,2,3,5
1School of Biomedical Engineering and Imaging Sciences, King's College London, London, United Kingdom, ²Institute for Biological and Medical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile, ³Millennium Institute for Intelligent Healthcare Engineering, Santiago, Chile, ⁴MR Research Collaborations, Siemens Healthcare Limited, Camberley, United Kingdom, ⁵Electrical Engineering Department, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

Keywords: Heart, Low-Field MRI

In this work, we demonstrate the feasibility of free-breathing whole-heart simultaneous bright-blood and black-blood imaging at 0.55T. We implemented an image navigator (iNAV)-based non-rigid motion-corrected 2 heartbeat sequence with 100% respiratory scan efficiency and high-dimensional patch-based low-rank (HD-PROST) denoising. The research sequence was validated on one healthy subject, showing simultaneous 3D visualization of cardiovascular anatomy on bright and black blood images at 0.55T in under 12 minutes scan time. 

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Jitka Starekova¹, Sheena Y Chu¹, David A Bluemke^1,2, Thomas M Grist^1,2,3, Joanna E Kusmirek¹, Scott K Nagle¹, Mark L Schiebler¹, Meghan G Lubner¹, Prashant Nagpal¹, and Scott B Reeder^1,2,3,4,5
1Radiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ²Medical Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ³Biomedical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁴Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States, ⁵Emergency Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States

Keywords: Vessels, MR Value

The closure of GE Healthcare’s Shanghai facility in April 2022 during the COVID-19 lockdown in China led to a major supply chain disruption of iodinated contrast media in North America. In response, our department instituted measures to conserve iodinated contrast, including the use of MRA as an alternative to contrast enhanced CTA to evaluate for pulmonary embolus (PE). Over the period of April through July of 2022, this strategy conserved an estimated 27 liters of iohexol 350 mg/ml. We report our experience on the use of MRA for diagnosis of PE in the general population during this period.

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Zixuan Zhao¹, Hsu-Lei Lee², Guowen Shao¹, Zhengyang Ming¹, Fei Han³, Dan Ruan¹, Anthony Christodoulou², J. Paul Finn¹, and Kim-Lien Nguyen^1,4
1University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ²Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ³Siemens Health Solutions, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ⁴VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Keywords: Heart, Cardiovascular, Congenital Heart Disease, Ferumoxytol

ROCK-MUSIC is a 4D whole heart MRI pulse sequence that has shown promise for fast imaging in pediatric congenital heart disease (CHD) without dependence on the ventilator respiratory gating signal. Recent research in cardiac multitasking with low rank tensor (LRT) reconstruction allows for decomposition of cardiorespiratory motion. In this preliminary work, we showed that LRT reconstruction can be applied to the ROCK-MUSIC acquisition to enable higher temporal resolution with cardiorespiratory resolved imaging. When compared to L1-ESPIRiT, the LRT approach is able to achieve comparable image quality. 

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Lu Lin¹, Difei Jiang², Yueting Xiao², and Yining Wang^1
1Department of Radiology, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, China, ²Shukun (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd, Beijing, China

Keywords: Heart, Cardiovascular

Coronary Magnetic Resonance Angiography (CMRA) is the only non-invasive coronary artery imaging method without radiation exposure and contrast media, and its application in clinical practice has been increasing. However, image post-processing for clinical diagnosis is time-consuming and requires expertise for radiologists. We proposed a three-dimensional U-Net-based automatic method for CMRA images by transfer learning from a pre-trained model of coronary computed tomography angiography(CCTA) to obtain accurate segmentation of coronary arteries.

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Toshiki Takumi¹, Hiroshi Hamano¹, Tomohiro Mochizuki¹, Yasutomo Katsumata², Masami Yoneyama¹, Shouichi Andou³, Ken Ohno³, and Takashi Namiki^1
1Philips Japan, Tokyo, Japan, ²Philips Healthcare, Tokyo, Japan, ³Kawanishi City Medical Center, Hyogo, Japan

Keywords: Vessels, Blood vessels, Venography

MRI is one of a promising diagnostic of lower extremity arterial and venous disease, and non-contrast-enhanced MR angiography has an array of specific applications for numerous clinical indications. In this study, we demonstrated non-contrast-enhanced non-triggered 3D gradient-echo echo-planer-imaging (3D-GRE-EPI) can provide high quality MR Venography in lower extremities. Consequently, 3D-GRE-EPI was provided high sharpness, contrast and could distinguish veins and arteries.

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Lexiaozi Fan^1,2, Jeanette N. Akuamoah², Kyungpyo D Hong², Joshua D. Robinson^2,3,4, Cynthia K. Rigsby^2,3,5, and Daniel Kim^1,2
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States, ²Department of Radiology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, United States, ³Department of Pediatric, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL, United States, ⁴Division of Cardiology, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States, ⁵Department of Medical Imaging, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, Chicago, IL, United States

Keywords: Vessels, Image Reconstruction

Conventional thoracic non-contrast magnetic resonance angiography (NC-MRA) often produces suboptimal image quality in pediatric patients with congenital heart disease (CHD) and results in lengthy scan times. We recently developed a NC-MRA pulse sequence using a stack-of-stars k-space sampling pattern with XD-GRASP reconstruction and evaluated its performance in adults. In this study, we sought to improve our NC-MRA pulse sequence by incorporating view-sharing (VS) and k-space weighted image contrast (KWIC) filtering to reduce blurring, which is critical for pediatric patients who have smaller hearts and faster heart rates than adults. We evaluated it performance against contrast-enhanced MRA in pediatric patients.

Yujie Yu¹, Maoxue Wang¹, Xiance Zhao², and Weibo Chen^2
1The Affiliated Drum Tower Hospital of Nanjing University Medical School, Nanjing, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Shanghai, China

Keywords: Vessels, Brain, TOF

The purpose of this study is to quantitively and qualitatively evaluate the clinical feasibility of spiral-based TOF-MRA (MRA_spiral) in terms of acceleration of data acquisition and imaging performance, with reference to the routine use of TOF-MRA with C-SENSE=4. The results showed that MRA_spiral with τ=8 (2min7s) can significantly reduce the acquisition time by 44.3% with a balanced image quality and scan time for arteries visualization and clinical diagnosis.

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Yoshiaki Morita^1,2, Hideki Ota², Takashi Nishina³, Sho Tanaka³, Yuichi Yamashita³, Yoshimori Kassai³, Ryuichi Mori², Yuki Ichinoseki², Tatsuo Nagasaka², Mitsue Miyazaki⁴, Kei Takase², and Tetsuya Fukuda^1
1Department of Radiology, National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, Suita, Osaka, Japan, ²Department of Radiology, Tohoku University Hospital, Sendai, Japan, ³Canon Medical Systems Corporation, Otawara, Japan, ⁴Department of Radiology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States

Keywords: Heart, Cardiovascular, coronary artery

Whole heart coronary MRA (WHCA) using fast field echo (FFE) with 3D centric ky-kz trajectory was compared with conventional FFE on healthy subjects. The mean acquisition was almost within 5 minutes using a 30-mm threshold in real-time motion correction with a navigator echoes. High resolution deep learning reconstruction (HR-DLR) was also applied to improve the image quality. 

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Michaela Schmidt¹, Marcel Dominik Nickel¹, and Daniel Giese^1
1Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany

Keywords: Vessels, Blood vessels

For increased vessel contrast a robust fat suppression of adjacent fat is desirable in MR angiography. While spectral fat suppression can be insufficient, fat separation based on 2-point Dixon requires the acquisition of a second echo. A 1-point Dixon approach based on opposed-phase imaging is presented here that allows to suppress fat dominated voxels effectively while keeping scan efficiency. The approach is evaluated in volunteers and compared to conventional approaches regarding image quality, artifacts, fat suppression and vessel diameter.

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J Paul Finn^1,2,3, Takegawa Yoshida^1,2, Arash Bedayat^1,2, Kim-Lien Nguyen^2,3,4, Xiaodong Zhong⁵, and Gerhard Laub^6
1Department of Radiological Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ²Diagnostic Cardiovascular Imaging Laboratory, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ³Department of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, United States, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ⁴Division of Cardiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, Los Angeles, CA, United States, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ⁵Siemens Healthineers, Los Angeles, CA, United States, ⁶DrLaubconsulting LLC, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Keywords: Heart, Cardiovascular

Contrast enhanced MRA of the aorta is typically performed without cardiac gating, greatly limiting its value in the aortic root and its more widespread utilization. We implemented a cardiac gated sequence for breath-held MRA of the thoracic aorta with flexible contrast during the steady-state distribution of ferumoxytol and compared it to ungated MRA with similar resolution. The resulting images were compared for definition of the aortic annulus, leaflets and ascending aorta.  The gated sequence performed significantly better than the ungated sequence for all measured parameters and holds promise as a high quality alternative to gated CTA in appropriate clinical circumstances.

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Vadim Malis¹, Won Bae^1,2, Yoshimori Kassai³, Marin A Mcdonald¹, and Mitsue Miyazaki^1
1Radiology, UC San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States, ²VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, CA, United States, ³Canon Medical, Ōtawara-shi, Japan

Keywords: Vessels, Vessels, Non-Contrast MRA

Carotid artery stenosis (CAS) is one of the most common causes of acute ischemic stroke. MRA techniques are routinely used for the diagnostics of CAS, yet one of their drawbacks remains as a long scanning time. In this study we acquired and compared two sets of images of carotid arteries: 3D time-of-flight (TOF), time spatial labeling inversion pulse (Time-SLIP) balanced steady-state free precession (bSSFP) and their accelerated versions that utilize centric k_y-k_z acquisition pattern (FAST3D).

Jin Zhang¹, Beibei Sun², Shenghao Ding², Yongjun Cheng³, Mengyou Ma³, Xinyang Wu³, Peng Wu³, and Huilin Zhao^2
1Radiology, Renji hospital, Shanghai, China, ²Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China, ³Philips Healthcare, Shanghai, China

Keywords: Vessels, Blood vessels

We recruited 4 patients with internal carotid artery occlusive diseases and assessed whether 4D-MR angiography can be used as a noninvasive alternative to intraarterial DSA. All patients were imaged with TOF-MRA, 4D-PACK, 4D-S-PACK, and DSA. 4D-PACK demonstrated a sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of 100%, 100%, and 100% respectively, as same as TOF-MRA, for diagnosing ICAO in reference to DSA. Moreover, 4D-PACK along with 4D-S-PACK could provide additional dynamic information on compensatory circulation after ICAO. Our results showed that non-contrast 4D-MR angiography has the potential to become an alternative imaging approach in diagnosing ICAO and initially assessing its blood supply pattern.

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Nan Gao¹, Yuqing Wang¹, Chengqin He², and Xiaolei Song^1
1Center for Biomedical Imaging Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, ²Inno Medicine, Beijing, China

Keywords: Atherosclerosis, Atherosclerosis

Time of flight (TOF) is the most commonly used bright blood MRI method for imaging the human vascular system. However, there were several challenges when TOF was used for imaging AS plaque in mice. This study proposed a novel MRI protocol, High-Resolution Heart-Saturated TOF (HRHS-TOF), imaging only AS plaque without background information. Moreover, this protocol could perform without measurement of the T1 value of blood in advance. ApoE^−/− mice were scanned to investigate the feasibility and data interpretation of HRHS-TOF protocol.

Gang Zhang¹, Wei Xing¹, Zhiwei Shen², Jianxiu Lian², and Ke Jiang^2
1The First Affiliated Hospital of Henan University of CM, Henan, China, ²Philips Healthcare, Beijing, China

Keywords: Heart, Cardiovascular

Magnetic resonance coronary angiography (MRCA) imaging technology is still somewhat sophisticated, with numerous elements influencing image quality. This study found that for subjects with high BMI, high heart rate, and high systolic blood pressure, further optimization of imaging sequences and parameters is needed to explore individualized coronary MR imaging protocols.

LIN GANG^1
1Xijing Hospital, Air Force Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China

Keywords: Vessels, Cardiovascular

Key words：fetal cardiovascular; coarctation of aortic arch;imaging technology 

Prenatal ultrasound diagnosis has always been the first choice of screening for perinatal birth defects. However, due to the influence of many factors, the difficulty of diagnosis is increased, even for experienced experts, so there is an urgent need to find better supplements and alternatives. With the development of the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, many congenital aortic diseases can be alleviated or cured by perinatal surgery or elective surgery, so early diagnosis can reduce perinatal morbidity and mortality.the author has made some innovative explorations in the MRI scanning method of fetal cardiovascular.

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Mitsuharu Miyoshi¹, Atsushi Nozaki¹, Shigeo Okuda², Masahiro Jinzaki², and Tetsuya Wakayama^1
1Global MR application and workflow, GE Healthcare Japan, Tokyo, Japan, ²Department of Radiology, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan

Keywords: Heart, Cardiovascular, Coronary Artery

For Breath-hold Whole Heart Coronary MRA, we developed the combination of Parallel Imaging and Compressed Sensing to accelerate scan time and Deep Learning reconstruction to improve the image quality. With the combination of these techniques, we could obtain Coronary MRA with 1.8mm isotropic acquisition voxel size in a possible breath-hold scan time. Deep Learning recon effectively improved the SNR and image quality.