Glenn S. Slavin1,
Jeffrey A. Stainsby2
1GE
Healthcare, Bethesda, MD, United States; 2GE Healthcare, Toronto,
ON, Canada
Look-Locker-based cardiac T1 mapping methods such as MOLLI only measure apparent T1. Correction methods are therefore necessary to estimate true T1. SMART1Map is a new technique that uses multiple single-point measurements in conjunction with long recovery times and real-time cardiac cycle timing to directly measure true T1, without the need for correction. This work compared the accuracy of SMART1Map and MOLLI against IR spin-echo in phantom experiments under several imaging conditions. Whereas MOLLI showed significant dependence on T1, heart rate, and data acquisition window duration, SMART1Map was insensitive to these parameters and yielded consistently accurate T1 measurements in all cases.