K-T-GRAPPA Accelerated Phase Contrast MRI: Improved Assessment of Blood Flow & 3-Directional Myocardial Motion During Breath-Hold

Simon Bauer¹, Michael Markl¹, Bernd Andr Jung¹

The use of spatiotemporal parallel imaging such as k-t-GRAPPA offers a high potential to speed-up data acquisition in dynamic imaging compared to conventional parallel imaging. In this study, velocity encoded phase-contrast MRI for the assessment of blood flow and myocardial motion was acquired during breath-hold as well as during free-breathing with navigator respiration control with a k-t-GRAPPA based technique with a reduction factor of R=5. These data were compared to an acquisition during free-breathing using conventional GRAPPA with R=2 whose lower reduction factor did not allow to acquire a high temporal resolution scan during a breath-hold period.