Accelerating Free Breathing Motion-Corrected Late Gadolinium Enhancement Imaging Using Simultaneous Multi-Slice Imaging

Motivation: Free breathing motion-corrected late gadolinium enhancement (FB-MOCO-LGE) is commonly used for scar assessment in patients unable to breathhold. Reduction of FB-MOCO-LGE scan time will contribute reducing overall examination time and cost. Goal(s): To evaluate the potential of simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) imaging in reducing FB-MOCO-LGE acquisition time while maintaining image quality. Approach: To Implement a 2x SMS-bSSFP technique with phase-sensitive inversion recovery (PSIR) reconstruction. Evaluation of FB-MOCO-LGE and SMS FB-MOCO-LGE was conducted on 20 patients. Results: The SMS approach demonstrated a significant two-fold reduction in acquisition time without compromising myocardial sharpness or signal-to-noise ratio and minimal impact on image quality. Impact: SMS-enabled FB-MOCO-LGE enables halves acquisition time with minimal on image quality. Therefore, this approach show promise for reducing LGE protocol duration and cost of cardiac MRI examination.