High throughput cardiac imaging in awake young children: Tips and Tricks

Background Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance (CMR) Imaging has enabled significant advances in the management of Paediatric Heart disease. However, conventional CMR has three main problems when applied to children. Firstly, the MR environment can be very intimidating for small children. Secondly, many sequences require multiple breath holds, which can be difficult in young or unwell children. Finally, CMR exams can be quite time consuming (upto 1 hour) and this make them difficult to tolerate in the paediatric population. These problems have limited the development of high throughput paediatric CMR. In fact, children under 8 often require general anaesthetic or sedation. In this study, we describe how combining new advances in CMR technology with simple child friendly scanner policies can make high throughput non-sedated CMR a possibility in children.