Dynamic TI for late gadolinium enhancement imaging in atrial fibrillation

Background There has been considerable interest in high resolution 3D late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) imaging in the atrial fibrillation (AF) population, both pre and post RF ablation. Unlike conventional studies, these are performed with single R-wave gating to reduce the acquisition duration and the effects of gadolinium wash-out. For AF, the heart rate variability results in variable magnetization recovery between sequence repeats which, with a fixed inversion time (TI), causes ghosting and poor nulling of normal tissue. This is exacerbated by missed triggers and the number of poor quality studies is high. An adaptive inversion recovery preparation has previously been demonstrated in a 2D phantom acquisition [1]. The purpose of this study is to implement such a technique (dynamic_TI) for improved imaging in the AF population.