Abstract

Purpose To minimize respiratory motion artifacts while achieving predictable scan times with 100% scan efficiency for thoracic 4D flow MRI. Methods A 4D flow sequence with golden radial phase encoding (GRPE) was acquired in 9 healthy volunteers covering the heart, aorta, and venae cavae. Scan time was 15 min, and data were acquired without motion gating during acquisition. Data were retrospectively re-binned into respiratory and cardiac phases based on respiratory self-navigation and the electrocardiograph signals, respectively. Nonrigid respiratory motion fields were extracted and corrected for during the k-t SENSE reconstruction. A respiratory-motion corrected (GRPE-MOCO) and a free-breathing (GRPE-UNCORR) 4D flow dataset was reconstructed using 100% of the acquired data. For comparison, a respiratory gated Cartesian 4D flow acquisition (CART-REF) covering the aorta was acquired. Stroke volumes and peak flows were compared. Additionally, an internal flow validation based on mass conservation was performed on the GRPE-MOCO and GRPE-UNCORR. Statistically significant differences were analyzed using a paired Wilcoxon test. Results Stroke volumes and peak flows in the aorta between GRPE-MOCO and the CART-REF showed a mean difference of -1.5 +/- 10.3 mL (P > 0.05) and 25.2 +/- 55.9 mL/s (P > 0.05), respectively. Peak flow in the GRPE-UNCORR data was significantly different compared with CART-REF (P 0.05). GRPE-MOCO showed higher accuracy for internal consistency analysis than GRPE-UNCORR. Conclusion The proposed 4D flow sequence allows a straight-forward planning by covering the entire thorax and ensures a predictable scan time independent of cardiac cycle variations and breathing patterns.