RESEARCH ARTICLE


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



Arun A. Josepha, b, Martin Fasshauserc, Klaus-Dietmar Merboldta, Jens Frahma, b, *
a Biomedizinische NMR Forschungs GmbH am Max-Planck-Institut für biophysikalische Chemie, Göttingen, Germany
b DZHK, German Center for Cardiovascular Research, partner site Göttingen, Germany
c Abteilung Diagnostische Radiologie, Universitätsmedizin, Göttingen, Germany

Article Information


Identifiers and Pagination:

Year: 2015
Volume: 9
First Page: 9
Last Page: 14
Publisher Id: TOMIJ-9-9
DOI: 10.2174/1874347101509010009

Article History:

Received Date: 23/01/2015
Revision Received Date: 17/04/2015
Acceptance Date: 20/04/2015
Electronic publication date: 26/6/2015
Collection year: 2015

© 2015 Joseph et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Biomedizinische NMR Forschungs GmbH am Max-Planck-Institut für biophysikalische Chemie, 37070 Göttingen, Germany; E-Mail: jfrahm@gwdg.de


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.