Rethinking Outer Volume Removal for Fast ECG-Triggered Anatomical Cardiac MRI

Motivation: To improve acceleration rates in ECG-triggered high-resolution anatomical CMR scans. Goal(s): To introduce a novel pulse sequence and a complementary outer volume removal (OVR) approach that enhances achievable acceleration rates by eliminating extracardiac signals. Approach: We developed a new pulse sequence for ECG-triggered anatomical CMR that acquires auxiliary data after the primary imaging window. This auxiliary data is used to estimate the outer volume signal, which is subtracted from the imaging window data. This OVR strategy simplifies the reconstruction problem, which is solved using zero-shot deep learning. Results: Our method enables higher acceleration rates in real-time LGE. Impact: This work proposes a novel pulse sequence for ECG-triggered CMR sequences, along with a complementary outer volume removal approach. This simplifies the reconstruction process, facilitating higher acceleration rates high-resolution anatomical CMR with reduced artifacts and improved image clarity.