A qualitative and quantitative assessment of cardiac cine Phase contrast MRI: comparison of image quality between 2D and 3D acquisition

Abstract

Background 3D and gapless multi-slice 2D cine Phase contrast (PC) MRI enables the visualization and analysis of 4D (3D + time) intracardiac flow. However, the image quality which affects the accuracy of segmentation of left ventricle (LV) has not been discussed. In this study, we compared the magnitude image and the source image of PC MR angiography (MagSUM) derived from both 2D and 3D PC MRI. For the qualitative analysis, we assessed the image quality for the delineation of endocardial border. And we measured LV volume and compared with standard cine MRI for the quantitative analysis. Methods Ten healthy volunteer (all male, median age: 24 years) underwent 2D and 3D prospectively ECG-gated PC MRI with respiratory naviation on 3T MRI (Trio a Tim, Siemens AG Healthcare Sector, Erlangen, Germany).The short axial plane was employed to cover left ventricle. The common parameters for PC MRI were: VENC = 150 cm/ sec, segmentation factor = 2 to 3, reconstruction phase = 12 to 14 according to R-R interval. The acquisition voxel of 2D and 3D PC MRI were reconstructed into 2.1x2.1x5 mm and 2.1x2.1x2.1 mm, respectively. Standard 2D retrospectively ECG-gated cine MRI was reconstructed to 2.1x1.8x8 mm. Two readers discussed and determined the