Clinical application of an automatic slice-alignment method for cardiac MR imaging

Abstract

Purpose: We evaluated the usefulness of an automatic slice-alignment method to simplify planning of cardiac magnetic resonance (MR) scans with a 3-tesla scanner. Methods: We obtained 2-dimensional (2D) axial multislice images using steady-state free precession (SSFP) sequences covering the whole heart at the end-diastole phase with electrocardiography (ECG) gating in 38 patients. We detected several anatomical feature points of the heart and calculated all planes required for cardiac imaging based on those points. We visually evaluated the acceptability of an acquired imaging plane and measured the angular differences of each view between the results obtained by this method and by a conventional manual pointing approach. Results: The average visual scores were 3.4 ± 1.0 for short-axis images, 3.2 ± 0.9 for 4- chamber images, 3.2 ± 0.8 for 2-chamber images, and 3.3 ± 0.8 for 3-chamber images; average angular differences were 5.8 ± 5.1 (short axis), 7.7 ± 5.7 (4-chamber), 11.5 ± 6.7 (2-chamber), and 9.1 ± 4.6 degrees (3-chamber). Processing time was within 1.8 s in all subjects. Conclusion: The proposed method can provide planes within the clinically acceptable range and within a short time in cardiac imaging of patients with various cardiac shapes and diseases without the need for high level operator proficiency in performing the examination and interpreting results.