Acceleration of tissue phase mapping by k-t BLAST: a detailed analysis of the influence of k-t-BLAST for the quantification of myocardial motion at 3T.

Background: The assessment of myocardial motion with tissue phase mapping (TPM) provides high spatiotemporal resolution and quantitative motion information in three directions. Today, whole volume coverage of the heart by TPM encoding at high spatial and temporal resolution is limited by long data acquisition times. Therefore, a significant increase in imaging speed without deterioration of the quantitative motion information is required. For this purpose, the k-t BLAST acceleration technique was combined with TPM black-blood functional imaging of the heart. Different k-t factors were evaluated with respect to their impact on the quantitative assessment of cardiac motion.

Results: It is demonstrated that a k-t BLAST factor of two can be used with a marginal, but statistically significant deterioration of the quantitative motion data. Further increasing the k-t acceleration causes substantial alteration of the peak velocities and the motion pattern, but the temporal behavior of the contraction is well maintained up to an acceleration factor of six.

Conclusions: The application of k-t BLAST for the acceleration of TPM appears feasible. A reduction of the acquisition time of almost 45% could be achieved without substantial loss of quantitative motion information.