Continuous assessment of cardiac output during exercise using real time flow with fast GPU reconstruction

Background The haemodynamic response to exercise is an important health marker. Phase contrast MR (PCMR) is an accurate method of assessing cardiac output and novel realtime sequences allow assessment of flow during exercise. However, such sequences often have time-consuming reconstruction algorithms, which prevent continuous cardiac output monitoring during exercise. Graphical processing units (GPU) with multiple processors offer the possibility of performing extremely fast reconstruction of real-time MR data. Such reconstructions would make continuous assessment of cardiac output during exercise possible and this projects aim to validate this approach.