Respiratory motion corrected interleaved 23Na/1H pTx MRI of the human heart at 7 Tesla

Motivation: Respiratory motion can falsify the quantified myocardial Na+ concentration in cardiac 23Na MRI and reduce inter-subject comparability. Goal(s): To correct cardiac 23Na MR data for respiratory motion effects. Approach: An interleaved 23Na/1H pTx sequence with 1H navigators was employed to reconstruct respiratory resolved 1H images. Appyling image co-registration of these 1H images, motion parameters were extracted for each respiratory motion state and used to perform respiratory motion correction for the corresponding 23Na MR data. Results: The motion correction reduced the effect of respiratory motion on the 23Na MR data, while providing a higher SNR than conventional respiratory motion sorting. Impact: Interleaved 23Na/1H pTx MRI allows to perform respiratory motion correction of the 23Na MR data based on the additional 1H MR data. This could enhance the accuracy of myocardial Na+ quantification and improve inter-subject comparability.