Free-Breathing, Black-Blood Cardiac Imaging Using Single-Shot BSSFP Sequence: A Feasibility Study

Xiaoming Bi¹, Jingsi Xie², Christopher Glielmi¹, James Carr², Debiao Li², Sven Zuehlsdorff¹

The goal of this work was to 1) investigate the feasibility of free-breathing BB cardiac imaging using a single-shot bSSFP sequence; 2) compare the efficacy of two BB methods: double inversion recovery (DIR) and T2IR for this application. Parameters for DIR and T2IR were optimized based on numerical simulations. Volunteer studies show that good quality 2D cardiac images can be consistently acquired with effective blood suppression. DIR preparation results in images with higher SNR and CNR while T2IR provides effective blood nulling regardless of blood flow direction at the cost of myocardium signal intensity.