Intravoxel Incoherent Motion applied to Cardiac diffusion weighted MRI using breath-hold acquisitions in healthy volunteers

Abstract

Background Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) gives rise to a unique method to evaluate perfusion and diffusion parameters of a tissue without the need of any contrast agent, with the introduction of the Intravoxel Incoherent Motion (IVIM) model (Le Bihan, Radiology 1988). Despite its relevance, cardiac DWI has so far been limited to low b-values primarily due to signal loss induced by physiological motion. Recently, an efficient cardiac DWI method was proposed where images were acquired at different time points of the cardiac cycle and where motion-induced signal-loss was removed by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) filtering and temporal MIP (tMIP) techniques (PCATMIP) (Rapacchi, Invest Radiol 2011). We compared the IVIM parameters obtained at a single optimized diastolic time point of the cardiac cycle (1TD) to the results obtained with PCATMIP technique.