Rapid Assessment of Left Ventricular Segmental Wall Motion, Ejection Fraction, and Volumes with Single Breath-Hold, Multi-Slice TrueFISP MR Imaging

Background and Objective: To reduce imaging time and complexity, we sought to determine whether single breath-hold, multi-slice TrueFISP (SB-MST) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method is comparable to standard multi-breath-hold, multi-slice TrueFISP (MB-MST) for assessment of left ventricular (LV) wall motion abnormality (WMA), volumes, and ejection fraction (EF). Methods and Results: We studied 62 patients having cardiac MRI at 1.5-Tesla. After acquiring standard MB-MST (one slice per breath-hold), SB-MST was performed, acquiring 3 short- and 2 long-axis views over only 20 heartbeats. Using both techniques, wall motion was scored using a 6-point, 17-segment LV model for all scans (62 patients × 2 techniques/patient = 124 scans) on two separate occasions. Separately, EF and ventricular volumes were evaluated using both MB-MST and SB-MST. For all analyses, MB-MST was considered the standard against which SB-MST was compared. Twenty-six of 62 patients exhibited at least one segmental WMA by MB-MST. Exact ...