Image-Based Self-Navigator Using Cardiac Functional Parameters for Cine Imaging

Christoph Kolbitsch¹, Jouke Smink², Tobias Schaeffter¹, Claudia Prieto¹, ³

Retrospectively gated cardiac cine imaging is an important clinical tool to diagnose and analyze heart function. For this, data from several cardiac cycles are combined based on ECG signals to increase temporal and spatial resolution. Here we propose a new cardiac navigator technique which derives gating signals from real-time (Golden-Ratio radial) image data by analyzing contraction and expansion of the left ventricle. A volunteer study has shown that the obtained gating signal has an accuracy of less than 17ms compared to standard ECG. The derived gating signal can be used to combine the real-time data to retrospective gated CINE images.