Free-breathing whole-heart multi-slice myocardial T₁ mapping in 2 minutes

Purpose: To develop and validate a saturation-delay-inversion recovery preparation, slice tracking and multi-slice based sequence for measuring whole-heart native T₁. Method: The proposed free-breathing sequence performs T₁ mapping of multiple left-ventricular slices by slice-interleaved acquisition to collect 10 electrocardiogram-triggered single-shot slice-selective images for each slice. A saturation-delay-inversion recovery pulse is used for T₁ preparation. Prospective slice tracking by the diaphragm navigator and retrospective registration are used to reduce through-plane and in-plane motion, respectively. The proposed sequence was validated in both phantom and human subjects (12 healthy subjects and 15 patients who were referred for a clinical cardiac MR exam) and compared with saturation recovery single-shot acquisition (SASHA) and modified Look-Locker inversion recovery (MOLLI). Results: Phantom T₁ measured by the proposed sequence had excellent agreement (R² = 0.99) with the ground-truth T₁ and was insensitive to heart rate. In both healthy subjects and patients, the proposed sequence yielded nine left-ventricular T₁ maps per volume in less than 2 minutes (healthy volunteers: 1.8 ± 0.4 minutes; patients: 1.9 ± 0.2 minutes). The average T₁ of whole left ventricle for all healthy subjects and patients were 1560 ± 61 and 1535 ± 49 ms by SASHA, 1208 ± 42 and 1233 ± 56 ms by MOLLI5(3)3, and 1397 ± 34 and 1433 ± 56 ms by the proposed sequence, respectively. The corresponding coefficient of variation of T₁ were 6.2 ± 1.4% and 5.8 ± 1.6%, 5.3 ± 1.1% and 5.1 ± 0.8%, and 4.9 ± 0.8% and 4.5 ± 0.8%, respectively. Conclusion: The proposed sequence enables quantification of whole heart T₁ with good accuracy and precision in less than 2 minutes during free breathing.