Whole-heart four-dimensional flow can be acquired with preserved quality without respiratory gating, facilitating clinical use: a head-to-head comparison

Abstract

Background

Respiratory gating is often used in 4D-flow acquisition to reduce motion artifacts. However, gating increases scan time. The aim of this study was to investigate if respiratory gating can be excluded from 4D flow acquisitions without affecting quantitative intracardiac parameters.

Methods

Eight volunteers underwent CMR at 1.5 T with a 5-channel coil (5ch). Imaging included 2D flow measurements and whole-heart 4D flow with and without respiratory gating (Resp(+), Resp(−)). Stroke volume (SV), particle-trace volumes, kinetic energy, and vortex-ring volume were obtained from 4D flow-data. These parameters were compared between 5ch Resp(+) and 5ch Resp(−). In addition, 20 patients with heart failure were scanned using a 32-channel coil (32ch), and particle-trace volumes were compared to planimetric SV. Paired comparisons were performed using Wilcoxon’s test and correlation analysis using Pearson r. Agreement was assessed as bias ± SD.

Results

Stroke volume from 4D flow was lower compared to 2D flow both with and without respiratory gating (5ch Resp(+) 88 ± 18 vs 97 ± 24.0, p = 0.001; 5ch Resp(−) 86 ± 16 vs 97.1 ± 22.7, p < 0.01). There was a good correlation between Resp(+) and Resp(−) for particle-trace derived volumes (R ² = 0.82, 0.2 ± 9.4 ml), mean kinetic energy (R ² = 0.86, 0.07 ± 0.21 mJ), peak kinetic energy (R ² = 0.88, 0.14 ± 0.77 mJ), and vortex-ring volume (R ² = 0.70, −2.5 ± 9.4 ml). Furthermore, good correlation was found between particle-trace volume and planimetric SV in patients for 32ch Resp(−) (R ² = 0.62, −4.2 ± 17.6 ml) and in healthy volunteers for 5ch Resp(+) (R ² = 0.89, −11 ± 7 ml), and 5ch Resp(−) (R ² = 0.93, −7.5 ± 5.4 ml), Average scan duration for Resp(−) was shorter compared to Resp(+) (27 ± 9 min vs 61 ± 19 min, p < 0.05).

Conclusions

Whole-heart 4D flow can be acquired with preserved quantitative results without respiratory gating, facilitating clinical use.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12880-015-0061-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Contributors

Mikael Kanski: [e-mail]

Johannes Töger: [e-mail]

Katarina Steding-Ehrenborg: [e-mail]

Christos Xanthis: [e-mail]

Karin Markenroth Bloch: [e-mail]

Einar Heiberg: [e-mail]

Marcus Carlsson: [e-mail]

Håkan Arheden: [e-mail]

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Med Imaging

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Med Imaging

Title: BMC Medical Imaging

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2342

Publication date (Electronic): 18 June 2015

Publication date PMC-release: 18 June 2015

Publication date Collection: 2015

Volume: 15

Affiliations

[ ]Department of Clinical Physiology, Lund University, Lund University Hospital, Lund, Sweden

[ ]Department of Numerical Analysis, Center of Mathematical Sciences, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

[ ]Department of Computer Science and Biomedical informatics, University of Thessaly, Lamia, Greece

[ ]Philips Healthcare, Lund, Sweden

[ ]Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

[ ]Center for Mathematics, Faculty of Engineering, Lund University, Lund, Sweden

Article

Publisher ID: 61

DOI: 10.1186/s12880-015-0061-4

PMC ID: 4470048

PubMed ID: 26080805

Copyright statement: © Kanski et al. 2015

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

Categories

Subject: Research Article

Custom metadata

issue-copyright-statement © The Author(s) 2015