Behzad Sharif1, Rohan Dharmakumar1, Louise Thomson2, Noel Bairey Merz2, Daniel S. Berman2, Debiao Li1
1Biomedical Imaging Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States; 2Heart Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States
A major limiting factor for specificity and sensitivity of current MP MR methods is the so-called subendocardial dark-rim artifact (DRA), which may mimic perfusion deficits. It is known that DRAs in conventional Cartesian imaging protocols are caused by a combination of factors including Gibbs ringing and cardiac motion effects. In this work, we aimed at improving the analysis of motion-induced DRAs by considering the combined effect of cardiac motion and limited spatial resolution (Gibbs ringing) on both the spatial extent and temporal persistence of the DRA. We performed first-pass MP MR on healthy dogs at moderate to high heart-rates to evaluate the effect of motion on the DRAs in terms of their spatial extent and temporal persistence. In addition, we present initial results for an alternative highly-accelerated radial acquisition and reconstruction scheme that can potentially eliminate the DRA due to motion.
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