The Open Medical Imaging Journal

2015, 9 : 9-14
Published online 2015 June 26. DOI: 10.2174/1874347101509010009
Publisher ID: TOMIJ-9-9

Aortic Pulse Wave Velocities Using Real-Time Phase-Contrast MRI

Arun A. Joseph , Martin Fasshauser , Klaus-Dietmar Merboldt and Jens Frahm
Biomedizinische NMR Forschungs GmbH am Max-Planck-Institut für biophysikalische Chemie, 37070 Göttingen, Germany.

ABSTRACT

Purpose:

To evaluate aortic pulse wave velocities obtained by real-time phase-contrast (PC) MRI in comparison to cine PC MRI.

Methods:

Real-time PC MRI of eight healthy volunteers employed highly undersampled radial FLASH sequences and phase-sensitive image reconstructions by regularized nonlinear inversion (NLINV) at 40 ms temporal resolution and 1.3 mm in-plane resolution. Pulse wave velocities were analyzed for combinations of 2, 3 and 4 locations of aortic flow using time-to-upslope and cross-correlation methods.

Results:

For the time-to-upslope analysis mean pulse wave velocities ranged from 3.5 to 3.9 m s-1 for real-time PC MRI and from 3.5 to 3.8 m s-1 for cine PC MRI. A cross-correlation analysis of the same data resulted in 2.9 to 3.3 m s-1 and 3.3 to 3.7 m s-1, respectively.

Conclusion:

Real-time PC MRI determined aortic pulse wave velocities from single cardiac cycles in close correspondence to values obtained by cine PC MRI.

Keywords:

Real-time MRI, Phase-contrast MRI, Pulse wave velocity, Blood flow.