Analysis of Complex Cardiovascular Flow with Three Component Acceleration Encoded MRI

Alex J. Barker¹, Felix Staehle¹, Jelena Bock¹, Bernd A. Jung¹, Michael Markl¹

The measurement of local blood acceleration provides valuable functional information regarding normal and deranged local flow characteristics (e.g. vortex formation). Acceleration data may be estimated from standard velocity encoded images which, however, suffer from noise amplification when calculating spatiotemporal velocity derivatives. As a result, this paper presents the in-vitro and in-vivo implementation of a gradient-optimized acceleration encoded PC-MRI sequence developed to shorten TE and thus the scan duration, especially when performing 4D scans (3D, time-resolved scans). In addition, a simple contrast mechanism to visualize complex flow events such as boundary layer separation, turbulent reattachment, and vortex formation is discussed.