Cardiac Single Breath-hold Balanced SSFP Cine ‘Watermark’ provides Cardiac Function via Magnitude and 2D Myocardial Strain via Phase

Cardiac MRI myocardial tagging enables quantification of myocardial strain. However, tagging remains limited to a research context due to the time-intensive analysis and need to run multiple sequences. CMR sequences must be fast and efficient. We previously developed a FLASH-based cine sequence called Cine ‘Watermark’ (CWM) that acquires normal cine magnitude images plus ‘hidden’ (via phase) cardiac strain data for calculating myocardial strain. Here we present a Balanced SSFP (bSSFP) version of CWM that presents improved SNR and scan efficiency. The bSSFP CWM is demonstrated in human subjects at 3T and its performance is compared to conventional Grid-Tagging MRI.