Simultaneous multislice cine and phase sensitive inversion recovery short axis cardiac imaging using Pilot-Tone triggering: early experience

Motivation: Conventional cine and phase sensitive inversion recovery (PSIR) imaging can be challenging for cardiac patients who may have difficulty lying supine for extended periods with multiple breath-holds. Goal(s): To assess feasibility of simultaneous multislice (SMS) cine and PSIR cardiac imaging in healthy volunteers with pilot-tone triggering. Approach: Image quality and derived ventricular functional parameters for SMS sequences are compared to standard cine and PSIR imaging. Results: Diagnostic quality SMS cine and PSIR imaging were obtained with no significant difference in biventricular functional parameters obtained with Standard cine imaging. With reduced setup time and nearly halved acquisition time, accelerated clinical cardiac MRI is possible. Impact: SMS cine and PSIR imaging using pilot-tone triggering is feasible in healthy volunteers with diagnostic image quality and comparable functional parameter measurements. Further experience including in a patient population is now planned.