Dark blood cine for improved Visualization of Intracavitary Structures (iVIS)

Background In bright blood imaging, partial volume averaging of small moving intracavitary structures and surrounding bright blood often degrades the depiction of such morphology. Therefore, structures including papillary muscles, trabeculations, and intracardiac masses are better visualized with dark blood (DB) techniques. DB imaging also provides better image contrast for low signal structures since it avoids the dynamic range compression present in bright blood imaging. DB sequences are thus the standard imaging tool for assessing cardiac morphology, but they do not contain information about motion, for example of mobile intracardiac masses. We therefore developed a novel dark blood gradient echo cine sequence that simultaneously depicts morphology, motion of intracardiac structures, and cardiac contraction.