2D Radial Sodium Heart MRI: Prospective Vs. Retrospective ECG-Gating Using Golden Angle Increments

Simon Konstandin¹, Lothar R. Schad¹

Sodium heart imaging is mainly used for research on myocardial infarction and viability purposes. The necessity of ECG-triggering for low resolutions was never examined. In this work, the reasonability of ECG-triggering is investigated at low resolutions needed for sodium MRI. Signal errors due to motion artifacts are below 5 % in myocardium and, therefore, the benefit of ECG-triggering is questionable. However, studies on patients with myocardial infarction (i.e., increased signal in the myocardium) must be performed to show the reasonability of ECG-triggering. Retrospective ECG-gating with Golden angle increments is shown for a time-efficient acquisition and, therefore, to increase signal-to-noise ratio.