Highlights
- •Organ motion is a challenge in MRI.
- •Ultrasound imaging can capture this motion in real time with high spatial resolution.
- •Ultrasonography and MRI can be performed simultaneously.
- •This information can be used to update the MR acquisition in real time.
Abstract
Purpose
One of the challenges of cardiac MR imaging is the compensation of respiratory motion,
which causes the heart and the surrounding tissues to move. Commonly-used methods
to overcome this effect, breath-holding and MR navigation, present shortcomings in
terms of available acquisition time or need to periodically interrupt the acquisition,
respectively. In this work, an implementation of respiratory motion compensation that
obtains information from abdominal ultrasound and continuously adapts the imaged slice
position in real time is presented.
Methods
A custom workflow was developed, comprising an MR-compatible ultrasound acquisition
system, a feature-motion-tracking system with polynomial predictive capability, and
a custom MR sequence that continuously adapts the position of the acquired slice according
to the tracked position. The system was evaluated on a moving phantom by comparing
sharpness and image blurring between static and moving conditions, and in vivo by
tracking the motion of the blood vessels of the liver to estimate the cardiac motion.
Cine images of the heart were acquired during free breathing.
Results
In vitro, the predictive motion correction yielded significantly better results than
non-predictive or non-corrected acquisitions (p ≪ 0.01). In vivo, the predictive correction
resulted in an image quality very similar to the breath-hold acquisition, whereas
the uncorrected images show noticeable blurring artifacts.
Conclusion
In this work, the possibility of using ultrasound navigation with tracking for the
real-time adaptation of MR imaging slices was demonstrated. The implemented technique
enabled efficient imaging of the heart with resolutions that would not be feasible
in a single breath-hold.
Graphical abstract
Graphical Abstract
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: February 04, 2020
Accepted:
January 9,
2020
Received in revised form:
December 21,
2019
Received:
October 14,
2019
Identification
Copyright
© 2020 Associazione Italiana di Fisica Medica. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
