Myocardial perfusion MRI with an undersampled 3D stack-of-stars sequence

Purpose: To determine the feasibility of three-dimensional (3D) hybrid radial (stack-of-stars) MRI with spatiotemporal total variation (TV) constrained reconstruction for dynamic contrast enhanced myocardial perfusion imaging. Methods: An ECG-triggered saturation recovery turboFLASH sequence with undersampled stack-of-stars sampling with spatiotemporal TV constrained reconstruction was developed for dynamic contrast enhanced myocardial perfusion imaging. Simulations were performed to study the dependence of the approach to steady state on flip angle and saturation recovery time for this stack-of-stars acquisition. Phantom studies were used to show the effect of the flip angle selection and imperfect spoiling on image qualities. Studies were done in three humans to test the feasibility of the approach for myocardial perfusion imaging. Results: The simulation and phantom studies showed that imperfect spoiling and magnetization changes during the readout were a function of flip angle and nonoptimized selection of flip angle could degrade the images. Low flip angle acquisitions in the human subjects result in images with good quality similar to multislice radial 2D images. Conclusions: 3D stack-of-stars sampling with spatiotemporal TV constrained reconstruction provides a promising alternative for myocardial perfusion imaging.