Abstract #0882

Motion, Resolution and Noise Thresholds for the Accurate Classification of Human Coronary Atherosclerotic Plaque by MRI

Paula Montesinos¹,², Himanshu Bhat³, Guangping Dai⁴, Manuel Desco¹,², Elfar Adalsteinsson⁵, Reza Nezafat⁶, David E. Sosnovik⁷

¹Departamento de Bioingeniera e Ingeniera Aeroespacial, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain; ²Instituto de Investigacin Sanitaria Gregorio Maran (IiSGM), Madrid, Spain; ³Siemens Medical Solutions, Charlestown, MA, United States; ⁴Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States; ⁵Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States; ⁶Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; ⁷Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States

The requirements for the accurate classification of human coronary atherosclerotic plaque by MRI in vivo remain unknown. We aimed here to reconstruct a high resolution ex vivo ground truth dataset of human coronary atherosclerotic plaques with varying degrees of spatial resolution, SNR and motion. Our results indicate that a spatial resolution of 0.5 mm, SNR > 10 and motion correction in all 3 directions are needed for in vivo MRI of coronary plaque. We further show that the acquisition of the central 10-15% of k-space during a motion-free breathold could reduce artifacts even further.