Single-Beat Real-Time Assessment of Cardiac Function Enabled by the SPARTA-3D Scheme

Motivation: Cardiac MR cine, even in its 2D form, has traditionally relied on data acquired over multiple heartbeats, which limits its ability to assess cardiac function on a beat-by-beat basis in clinical practice. Goal(s): To enable reliable 3D cardiac functional assessment of every individual heartbeat in real-time. Approach: We enhanced highly accelerated spiral-in/out-based SPARTA-3D technique to improve signal sensitivity for real-time 3D whole-heart cardiac cine. Results: Real-time 3D cardiac functional assessment was successfully conducted. The cardiac parameters for each heartbeat exhibited strong consistency throughout the entire data acquisition period, which included eight heartbeats from healthy volunteers, while also effectively distinguishing variations between individual heartbeats. Impact: SPARTA-3D enables real-time 3D cardiac assessment for each heartbeat, offering comprehensive whole-heart coverage and high temporal resolution of approximately 50 ms. This technique holds significant potential for diagnosing cardiovascular diseases, particularly arrhythmias, by effectively capturing critical beat-to-beat variations.