Edward DiBella1,
Ganesh Adluru2, Liyong Chen3, Chris McGann4
1University of
Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA; 2Radiology, University of Utah; 3Bioengineering,
University of Utah; 4Cardiology, University of Utah
Good ECG-gating is essential to obtaining the same cardiac phase of each slice to maximize the value of dynamic contrast enhanced cardiac perfusion scans. However, ECG-gating is often poor, and can be more problematic at higher field strength scanners and in obese patients. As well, patients with arrhythmias can be problematic for acquiring high quality images due to the R-R interval variations. Here we propose an ungated perfusion acquisition that runs constantly without any gating signals. The images are acquired so rapidly that it is possible to sort the resulting dataset and create effectively self-gated perfusion images.