Inline Directionally Independent Magnitude of Velocity Maps for Visualization and Quantification of Jet Flow

Jie Deng¹, Christopher Glielmi², Peter Weale², Cynthia Rigsby¹, Andrew deFreitas³, Sven Zuehlsdorff²

Pediatric patients with congenital heart diseases often have irregular blood flow patterns (jet flow) with variant orientation and distributions. Phase contrast MRI with velocity encoding provides flow visualization and quantification of peak velocity within the core of jet flow. 2D slice oriented orthogonal to jet flow with through-plane velocity-encoding is commonly used in clinical studies. However, post-stenotic jets frequently exhibit a degree of eccentricity and can change direction throughout the cardiac cycle. Irregular and narrow jets can be more difficult to be measured. We propose inline computation of velocity magnitude independent of direction, eliminating reliance on optimal slice orientation and facilitating clinical evaluation of irregular flow patterns as found in stenotic jets.