Cardiac cine MRI: Comparison of 1.5 T, non-enhanced 3.0 T and blood pool enhanced 3.0 T imaging

Introduction: Cardiac cine imaging using balanced steady state free precession sequences (bSSFP) suffers from artefacts at 3.0 T. We compared bSSFP cardiac cine imaging at 1.5 T with gradient echo imaging at 3.0 T with and without a blood pool contrast agent. Materials and methods: Eleven patients referred for cardiac cine imaging underwent imaging at 1.5 T and 3.0 T. At 3.0 T images were acquired before and after administration of 0.03 mmol/kg gadofosveset. Blood pool signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), temporal variations in SNR, ejection fraction and myocardial mass were compared. Subjective image quality was scored on a four-point scale. Results: Blood pool SNR increased with more than 75% at 3.0T compared to 1.5 T (p < 0.001); after contrast administration at 3.0T SNR increased with 139% (p < 0.00 1). However, variations in blood pool SNR at 3.0 T were nearly three times as high versus those at 1.5 T in the absence of contrast medium (p < 0.00 1); after contrast administration this was reduced to approximately a factor 1.4 (p = 0.2 1). Saturation artefacts led to significant overestimation of ejection fraction in the absence of contrast administration (1.5 T: 44.7 +/- 3.1 vs. 3.0 T: 50.7 +/- 4.2 [P = 0.04] vs. 3.0 T post contrast: 43.4 +/- 2.9 [p = 0.55]). Subjective image quality was highest for 1.5 T (2.8 +/- 0.3), and lowest for non-enhanced 3.0 T (1.7 +/- 0.6; p = 0.006). Conclusions: GRE cardiac cine imaging at 3.0T after injection of the blood pool agent gadofosveset leads to improved objective and subjective cardiac cine image quality at 3.0T and to the same conclusions regarding cardiac ejection fraction compared to bSSFP imaging at 1.5 T. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.