Abstract #1240

In Vivo Cardiac Diffusion MRI Via Second Order Motion Compensated Diffusion Weighted Driven Equilibrium Balanced Steady State Free Precession (SOMOCO-DW-DE BSSFP)

Christopher Nguyen¹,², Zhaoyang Fan², Rohan Dharmakumar², Troy LaBounty, James Min, Daniel Berman, Debiao Li²,³

¹Biomedical Engineering Interdepartmental Program, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States; ²Departments of Biomedical Sciences and Imaging, Biomedical Imaging Research Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States; ³Department of Bioengineering, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Cardiac diffusion MRI (CDMRI) has the potential to identify acute myocardium ischemia and assess the chronic change of myofiber orientation after a myocardial infraction. Serious technical challenges such as cardiac motion and clinical hardware limitations restrict the technique in vivo. We propose a novel application of DW driven equilibrium balanced steady-state free precession (DW-DE-bSSFP) to include second order MOCO (SOMOCO) that not only allows for longer Tdiff and acceptable b-values, but also takes advantage of the high SNR of bSSFP. We show the feasibility of applying SOMOCO-DW-DE-bSSFP for in vivo CDMRI within clinically human limited MR parameters in healthy volunteers.