Prospective Navigator Cardiac Triggering for Coronary MRA

Naoyuki Takei¹, Yuji Iwadate¹, Takayuki Suzuki², Koji Yoneyama², Takayuki Masui², Hiroyuki Kabasawa¹

The purpose of this study was to develop a prospective navigator echo based cardiac triggering for coronary artery imaging (CAI). Echo peak from FID signal acquired using 2D selective navigator pulse with 10mm in diameter that was placed on aortic arch was used for cardiac triggering. The magnitude of echo peak from the FID was displayed on a real-time monitor window. Systole was detected by a rise in echo peak above a threshold. Data was acquired with Balanced Steady State Free Precession (bSSFP) data acquisition with spectral selective inversion pulse for fat saturation (SPIR) with breath hold. The comparison study was performed to a conventional ECG trigger approach on 1.5T. The preliminary results provide a comparable depiction of coronary arteries to ECG without the constraints of scan time, spatial resolution and image quality.