Golden angle dual-inversion recovery acquisition coupled with a flexible time-resolved sparse reconstruction facilitates sequence timing in high-resolution coronary vessel wall MRI at 3 T

Purpose: The need for performing dual-inversion recovery (DIR) coronary vessel wall MRI in correspondence to minimal cardiac motion and optimal blood signal nulling is a major challenge. We propose to address this hurdle by combining DIR with a prolonged acquisition window in conjunction with a golden angle radial trajectory and k-t sparse sensitivity encoding (SENSE) reconstruction to enable a flexible a-posteriori selection of optimized imaging parameters. Methods: Coronary vessel wall data acquisition was performed with DIR golden angle radial imaging in n=15 healthy subjects. Images reconstructed using k-t sparse SENSE and different reconstruction window settings were quantitatively (vessel wall conspicuity, thickness, acquisition, and reconstruction window settings) compared with those obtained with more conventional radial DIR imaging. Results: A flexible retrospective selection of the reconstruction window width and position improved vessel wall conspicuity with respect to baseline acquisitions (P < 0.01). Vessel wall thickness remained unchanged (P = nonsignificant (NS)). Temporal window widths were similar for both approaches (P = NS), yet their position within the cardiac cycle differed significantly (P < 0.02). Conclusions: A flexible DIR coronary vessel wall MRI technique that alleviates constraints associated with sophisticated sequence timing was proposed. When compared with a more conventional approach, the technique significantly improved image quality. Magn Reson Med 77:961–969, 2017.