Accelerated free-breathing 3D simultaneous Bright and black-blood Whole-Heart Imaging at 0.55T: Comparison to 1.5T.

Motivation: Bright-blood and black-blood MRI is fundamental for the comprehensive assessment of cardiac disease.Low field MRI promises high quality imaging at lower cost and improved patient accessibility.3D bright-blood and black-blood whole-heart imaging applications at low-field are limited. Goal(s): To implement and evaluate the diagnostic quality of a novel framework for simultaneous 3D whole-heart bright-and black-blood(BOOST) imaging at 0.55T. Approach: 3D whole-heart BOOST including image-based navigation, motion corrected reconstruction and patch-based denoising was evaluated at 0.55T.Diagnostic capabilities of 3D BOOST was evaluated versus its counterpart at 1.5T. Results: 3D whole-heart BOOST at 0.55T offers good quality imaging, that is comparable to its counterpart at 1.5T. Impact: This study demonstrates that high-quality bright- and black-blood 3D whole-heart imaging can be achieved at 0.55T CMR, showing comparable image and diagnostic quality to the current clinical standard in ­both healthy subjects and clinical patients.