Davide Santoro1, Federico von Samson-Himmelstjerna2, 3, Flavio Carinci3, 4, Fabian Hezel3, Matthias Dieringer, 5, Thoralf Niendorf3, 5
1Berlin Ultra-High Field Facility (BUFF) , Max Delbrck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), Berlin, Germany; 2Center for Stroke Research, Charite Universittsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany; 3Berlin Ultra-High Field Facility (BUFF), Max Delbrck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), Berlin, Germany; 4Research Center Magnetic Resonance Bavaria (M.R.B), Wuerzburg, Germany; 5Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC), Charite Campus Buch, Berlin, Germany
There is a growing number of Cardiac MR applications which could benefit of the signal to noise ratio advantage at high magnetic fields. However the image quality in CMR may be spoiled by effects other than SNR. B1+ inhomogeneities present at high field strengths might affect quantitative CMR studies which require knowledge of the local applied flip angle. The acquisition of a FA map with standard methods in the heart is challenging for the varying heart rates and repetition times in cardiac gated imaging. This study examines the feasibility of cardiac gated 2D Bloch Siegert B1 mapping with the goal to acquire a B1+ maps of the heart at 3T in a single breath-hold. Our preliminary results do not show major changes in the calculated flip angle at the blood/myocardium interface and hence indicate that blood flow related phase contributions might be minor.