Abstract
Purpose: Adenosine stress CMR is commonly used to assess myocardial ischaemia. Obtaining high quality images requires maximising signal to noise ratio (SNR) over a large double-oblique field of view (FOV) whilst minimising artefacts. A 32-channel surface coil may provide a higher SNR over a larger FOV compared to standard coils, possibly leading to improved image quality. Materials and Methods: 50 adenosine perfusion CMR scans were performed on a Philips Achieva CV 1.5T, with either a 5 or 32-channel coil (25 patients each) using standardised acquisition protocols. 3 short axis slices were acquired per cardiac cycle and the resulting cine images were scored by two blinded CMR specialists on a quality scale of 1 to 5. Phantom studies were performed using similar acquisition parameters and the SNR was calculated and compared across a range of acceleration factors. Results: The mean patient age was 62 ± 11 years and 50% of patients were male. The image quality scores were higher using the 32-channel coil (mean 3.8 ± 0.7 vs 3.2 ± 0.9 p = 0.002). The average phantom SNR was greater for the 32-element coil across the range of acceleration factors measured (103 vs 86 p = <0.001). Conclusions: The 32-channel coil produces significantly higher quality images and a higher SNR than the 5-channel coil in routine perfusion CMR.
Highlights
Perfusion Imaging First pass stress perfusion cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (Stress Perfusion CMR) has been comprehensively shown to be a safe, reliable and reproducible method of identifying areas of inducible myocardial ischaemia without the use of ionising radiation [1,2,3,4,5]
Materials and Methods: 50 adenosine perfusion CMR scans were performed on a Philips Achieva CV 1.5T, with either a 5 or 32-channel coil (25 patients each) using standardised acquisition protocols. 3 short axis slices were acquired per cardiac cycle and the resulting cine images were scored by two blinded CMR specialists on a quality scale of 1 to 5
There was an improvement in image quality score using the 32-channel coil compared to the 5-channel coil for observer 1, observer 2 and with both observers’ scores combined, which was highly statistically significant
Summary
Perfusion Imaging First pass stress perfusion cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (Stress Perfusion CMR) has been comprehensively shown to be a safe, reliable and reproducible method of identifying areas of inducible myocardial ischaemia without the use of ionising radiation [1,2,3,4,5]. Acquiring high quality diagnostic images in a routine clinical setting can be technically challenging due to the limitations of the current hardware and acquisition protocols. These limitations can lead to a low in-plane resolution, resulting in dark rim Gibbs artefact [7], non-uniform sensitivity over the FOV, poor SNR and long acquisition times. A combination of highly accelerated parallel imaging and temporal encoding (e.g. k-t SENSE) can be used to increase spatial resolution [8,9] using temporal information requires post processing and is prone to movement artefacts, which cannot be identified until after the perfusion scan has been completed. 3T magnets are not yet widely available in the clinical setting
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