Low latency iterative reconstruction of first pass stress cardiac perfusion with physiological stress using graphical processing unit

Abstract

Background Cardiac MR perfusion has been shown to provide high diagnostic accuracy in detection of the coronary artery disease [1]. We have recently installed an MR-compatible supine bicycle mounted on the scanner table, which allows performing CMR perfusion immediately after physiologic stress. However, patients are unable to sustain a breathold after physical exercise, limiting the choice of acceleration techniques such as k-t approaches. Additionally, due to subject motion during exercise, coil sensitivity map are inaccurate resulting in imaging artifacts in conventional parallel imaging reconstruction. Compressed sensing (CS) is an alternative acceleration technique that enables high acceleration even without exploiting temporal dimension or need for coil maps. However, iterative CS reconstruction of randomly undersampled k-space is lengthy, performed off-line and is not usually integrated into the workflow of a clinical scan which requires viewing and initial assessment on the scanner console and storing the clinical images on the hospital PACS system. In this proposal, we aim to develop an accelerated iterative CS reconstruction workflow for reconstruction of CS acquired perfusion data using physical stress perfusion.