Purpose: To develop an accelerated wideband cardiac perfusion pulse sequence and test whether it can produce diagnostically acceptable image quality and whether it can be used to reliably quantify myocardial blood flow (MBF) in patients with a cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED).
Materials and methods: A fivefold-accelerated wideband perfusion pulse sequence was developed using compressed sensing to sample one arterial input function plane and three myocardial perfusion (MP) planes per heartbeat in patients with a CIED with heart rates as high as 102 beats per minute. Resting perfusion scans were performed in 10 patients with a CIED and in 10 patients with no device as a control group. Two clinical readers compared the resulting images and retrospective images of the 10 patients with a CIED, which were obtained by using a previously described twofold-accelerated wideband perfusion pulse sequence with temporal generalized autocalibrating partially parallel acquisition. Summed visual score (SVS) was defined as the sum of conspicuity, artifact, and noise scores individually ranging from 1 (worst) to 5 (best). Resting MBF in the remote zones was quantified using Fermi deconvolution.
Results: Median SVS was significantly different (P < .05) between the prospective and retrospective CIED groups (13 vs nine) and between the nondevice group and the retrospective CIED group (13.5 vs nine); all median SVSs were nine or greater (clinically acceptable cut point). The median resting MBF in remote zones was not significantly different (P = .27) between patients with a CIED (1.1 mL/min/g; median left ventricular ejection fraction [LVEF], 52.5%) and patients with no device (1.3 mL/min/g; median LVEF, 64.0%). Mean MBF values were consistent with those (mean resting MBF range, 1.0-1.2 mL/min/g) reported by two prior state-of-the-art cardiac perfusion MRI studies.
Conclusion: The proposed scan yielded diagnostically acceptable image quality and enabled reliable quantification of MBF with three MP planes per heartbeat in patients with a CIED with heart rates as high as 102 beats per minute. Supplemental material is available for this article. © RSNA, 2020.
2020 by the Radiological Society of North America, Inc.