High Throughput Cardiac MRI Using Interleaved Breath-Hold Cardiac Cine and Free-Breathing Coronary MR Angiography: Initial Results

Markus Henningsson¹, Reza Nezafat², Peter Koken³, Giel Mens⁴, Rene M. Botnar¹

Scans using multiple breath-holds are inefficient because no data is acquired while the subject is breathing freely between breath-holds. In this work we investigate a new framework for interleaving a free-breathing coronary MRA dataset during the patient recovery period between breath-holds of a cardiac cine scan. This result in a shorter total scan time of nearly 50% compared to if the free-breathing and breath-held scan were acquired without interleaving. The proposed framework has potential to greatly improve throughput in cardiac MRI by allowing for a more efficient use of breath-held and free-breathing scans.