Jens Frahm
Biomedizinische NMR Forschungs GmbH Max-Planck-Institut für Biophysikalische Chemie, Germany
Title: Cardiovascular MRI in real time
Biography
Biography: Jens Frahm
Abstract
This lecture presents recent advances towards real-time magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) which result in high-quality image series of dynamic processes with acquisition times of only 10 to 40 milliseconds. The acquisition technique employs radially encoded gradient-echo sequences with up to 30-fold data undersampling. Image reconstruction emerges as the iterative solution of a nonlinear inverse problem which is accomplished by a bypass computer with 8 graphical processing units fully integrated into a commercial MRI system. Apart from a brief description of the acquisition and reconstruction technique, the talk will focus on applications to cardiac function, quantitative blood flow and myocardial T1 mapping. These studies may now be performed without the need for ECG synchronization and during free breathing. Taken together, real-time MRI techniques offer the chance to develop comprehensive CMR protocols which are comfortable to the patient, provide new diagnostic opportunities (e.g., immediate physiological responses to stress or exercise), are insensitive to irregular motion (e.g., patients with arrhythmia), and may even be more cost-effective (i.e., much shorter) than current examinations. Future progress is foreseeable and will involve more extensive parametric mapping studies (e.g., T2* relaxation, perfusion and temperature) and a revitalization of “interventional” MRI procedures.
