Rapid Breath-Held T1 Weighted Double Inversion Recovery Black-Blood (DIR-BB) Turbo Spin Echo (TSE) Cardiac Imaging Using SENSE, ZOOM and Variable Refocusing Flip Angle Readout

feifei Qu¹, Ramkumar Krishnamurthy², Amol Pednekar³, Benjamin Y. Cheong⁴, Claudio Arena⁴, Pei-Herng Hor¹, Raja Muthupillai⁵

The combination of SENSE, and ZOOM allowed us to reduce the total number of phase encoding steps without compromising spatial resolution, as well as the incorporation of variable refocusing flip angle readout to maintain the myocardial signal intensity during the readout, allows one to acquire DIR-BB prepared T1 weighed images of the heart within a reasonable breathhold of 5-7 s per slice. Our results show that myocardial to liver contrast can be improved by 50 %.