Methodology for Estimating 3D Respiration in Heart from Free Breathing MRI Acquisitions

Respiratory motion affects free breathing cardiac magnetic resonance quantification. The objective of this study was to estimate respiratory motion on the heart from free breathing cardiac magnetic resonance imaging and respiratory navigation recording. The displacement caused by respiratory motion on the heart is obtained through non-rigid registration and is modeled by fitting this displacement to the respiratory navigation signal. The resulting model could be used to adjust the position of subsequent acquisitions, thereby mitigating the effects of varying respiratory motions on the imaging. Although this method successfully generates patient-specific three-dimensional motion models on two first datasets, it has to be further experimented on more subjects with various respiratory regimes.