Interactive black blood preparation for interventional cardiovascular MRI

Background Recent work demonstrated the feasibility of using realtime MRI to guide right heart cardiac catheterization. In order to make balloon catheters used in the procedure more conspicuous, the balloons were filled with dilute Gd-DTPA, and non-selective saturation pulses were applied along with acquisition of thick slices. The saturation pulses increased the contrast between blood and the Gd-DTPA filled balloons, but suppressed the signal from the background tissue, effectively removing the anatomical context for image-guidance. The goal of this work was to develop an interactive black blood technique, which would preserve the high contrast of the Gd-DTPA balloon and preserve background tissue signal.