Temporal phase unwrapping for cine velocity imaging

A simple algorithm named temporal phase unwrapping (TPU) is introduced to address the phase aliasing problem in time-dependent phase contrast (CINE-PC) velocity imaging. The method exploits the temporal continuity of velocity field and unwraps the phase along time. TPU only involves a one-dimensional (1D) temporal integration; therefore, many complications in 2D or 3D spatial phase unwrapping are avoided. Differential velocity maps (DVM) between adjacent movie frames are first calculated from the complex MR images. The DVMs have no phase aliasing as the differential velocities are much smaller than the absolute velocities. Aliasing-free velocity maps are obtained by integrating the DVMs along the time direction provided an aliasing-free reference velocity map (RVM) is found as a starting point of the integration. Typically, such RVMs are always available within the cardiac cycle, especially in diastole where the blood flow is the lowest. In vivo results from fully automated processing and detailed discussion on noise behavior are presented.