SMS-SPARCS: Free-breathing CAIPIRINHA-based SMS cine imaging using Spiral Acquisition with Respiratory correction and Cardiac Self-gating

Motivation: Cine imaging is important for CMR quantification of left ventricular (LV) function, but conventional breath-held techniques are time consuming. Goal(s): This study aims to improve continuous spiral-based cardiac cine acquisition efficiency. Approach: A CAIPIRINHA-based SMS imaging using spiral acquisition with respiratory correction and cardiac self-gating strategy is proposed. Results: By optimizing the phase modulation pattern with robust self-gating signal extraction, cine images covering the whole LV are obtained in approximately 30s free breathing without ECG gating. The proposed technique yielded comparable LVEF to the clinical gold-standard. Although image quality was slightly inferior to the clinical technique, SMS-SPARCS produced diagnostically acceptable image quality. Impact: This study furthers our insight into designing phase modulation and reconstruction techniques for continuous spiral-based multi-slice self-gated acquisition. This technique improves efficiency of cine acquisition and does not require ECG or breath-holding.