A preliminary investigation for a Localized Quadratic Encoded 3D bSSFP cardiac cine MRI

Motivation: A gated 3D cardiac cine MRI will be useful to evaluate cardiac structure and function from different viewing angles, unlike conventional 2D scans covering only specific orientations. Goal(s): To develop a retrospectively cardiac gated 3D imaging sequence for the cine scan with reasonable breath-hold time and reconstruction speed. Approach: A bSSFP sequence was combined with Localized Quadratic Encoding RF pulses for the cardiac gated 3D imaging. Results: The 3D cardiac cine imaging requires around 20 breath-holds and each breath-hold takes around 25 seconds. The images feature similar soft tissue contrast to the conventional 2D bSSFP scanning with isotropic resolution along different viewing angles. Impact: The proposed method enables a 3D cardiac cine scan with reasonable breath-hold duration and much faster reconstruction speed.