Abstract #1316

Optimized Respiratory Reference Position for 3D Self-Navigated Whole Heart Coronary MRA

Davide Piccini¹,², Gabriele Bonanno², Giulia Ginami²,³, Arne Littmann⁴, Michael O. Zenge⁴, Matthias Stuber²

¹Advanced Clinical Imaging Technology, Siemens Healthcare IM S AW, Lausanne, Switzerland; ²Department of Radiology, University Hospital (CHUV) and University of Lausanne (UNIL) / Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM), Lausanne, Switzerland; ³Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, Padova, Italy; ⁴MR Application and Workflow Development, Healthcare Sector, Siemens AG, Erlangen, Bayern, Germany

In standard respiratory self-navigated (SN) whole heart coronary MRA, the reference position for motion correction is usually selected at the very beginning of the image data acquisition. In this work, the relationship between the choice of the reference and objective image quality was investigated. End-expiration, end-inspiration and mean respiratory position were considered as possible candidate reference respiratory positions for SN whole-heart coronary MRI and tested in 11 volunteers. Vessel sharpness of the mid segment of the left anterior descending coronary artery was computed for every dataset. End-expiration was found to significantly improve vessel sharpness, when compared to the end-inspiration.