Artifacts reduction in strain maps of tagged magnetic resonance imaging using harmonic phase.

Tagged Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a noninvasive technique for examining myocardial function and deformation. Tagged MRI can also be used in quasi-static MR elastography to acquire strain maps of other biological soft tissues. Harmonic phase (HARP) provides automatic and rapid analysis of tagged MR images for the quantification and visualization of myocardial strain. We propose a new artifact reduction method in strain maps. Image intensity of the DC component is estimated and subtracted from spatial modulation of magnetization (SPAMM) tagged MR images. DC peak interference in harmonic phase extraction is greatly reduced after DC component subtraction. The proposed method is validated using both simulated and MR acquired tagged images. Strain maps are obtained with better accuracy and smoothness after DC component subtraction.