High Resolution MR Imaging of the Fetal Heart with Cardiac Triggering: A Feasibility Study in the Sheep Fetus

Jin Yamamura¹, Bernhard Schnackenburg², Hendrik Kooijman², Michael Frisch¹, Gerhard Adam¹, Ulrike Wedegaertner¹

Although the fetal MRI has already been applied to almost all fetal organs, the evaluation of the fetal heart has been omitted so far due to technical problems. Usually, cardiac imaging requires electro-cardiogram (ECG) triggering and breath holds of the patient during measurements. Since the fetal heart lies within the uterus, there is no possibility for a direct triggering of the fetal heart frequency. The visualization of anomalies both of the heart and the great vessels is actually of great importance for prenatal diagnostics, though not yet feasible. In this here present study the attempt was to develop a fetal cardiac MRI by using a fetal sheep model and thus to improve the image quality of fetal cardiac imaging. This feasibility study is based on performing fetal cardiac MR imaging by triggering the fetal heart beat in utero in a sheep model.