BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The assessment of motor function is an essential component of neurologic examinations, which imaging studies have extended to the fetus. US assessment is hampered by a limited FOV, whereas MR imaging has the potential to be an alternative. Our objectives were to optimize a cine MR imaging sequence for capturing fetal movements and to perform a pilot analysis of the relati...

The aim of this work was to investigate the differences in dose settings and image quality among 10 X-ray systems used for interventional cardiology in Chile. Entrance surface air kerma (ESAK) was measured on a phantom of 20 cm thickness of polymethyl methacrylate slabs. Image quality was evaluated using DICOM images of a test object Leeds TOR 18-FG for cine mode acquisition, through the numeri...

Background Demonstration of myocardial oedema following MI allows differentiation of acute and chronic MI, and assessment of the area at risk of infarction. T2-weighted dark blood TSE imaging for oedema is technically demanding and prone to artefacts. Our protocol for patients with acute MI include standard oedema imaging sequences and more recently T2 prepared single shot SSFP sequences, follo...

Methods We retrospectively reviewed 22 patients with a history of Fontan palliation (median age 8.2, range 2 27.5 years) who had cardiac MRIs with a Siemens 1.5 Tesla Avanto (Siemens Medical Systems) scanner, 11 with TA, 11 with HLHS. All had steady-state free precession (SSFP) sequences of 4-chamber (4ch) cine and short axis (SAx) cine stacks from cardiac base to apex. Ejection fraction (EF) w...

PURPOSE 1) To describe the pattern of normal intracranial CSF flow in children and 2) to demonstrate altered CSF flow patterns in pediatric hydrocephalus and ventriculomegaly with flow-sensitized cine-MR examinations. METHOD Cardiac gated, multiframe, gradient echo sequences on a 1.5-T system were displayed on a closed loop cine format and compared to standard MR images. Areas of normal flow ...

Background Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging has become an important diagnostic tool for the detection of impaired myocardial motion, which has been considered as a common consequence of most ischemic or non-ischemic heart diseases. Both cine DENSE and TPM have been independently adopted to delineate abnormal regional myocardial motion patterns for the estimation of the progression of cardiovascu...

Methods Radial gradient-echo sequences with fully balanced SSFP gradients and at least 15-fold undersampling (real-time SSFP, RT) and conventional ECG-synchronized cine SSFP CMR (Cine) was used on a 1.5 T scanner system. Patients who had permanent arrhythmias (most often atrial fibrillation, AA; n = 8) or wall motion abnormalities (WMA; n = 3) were scanned in the standard views and compared to ...

Background Changes in myocardial strain parameters is of interest in patients with heart failure as an objective measure of disease severity. Speckle-tracking echocardiography (STecho) is the accepted standard of reference for myocardial strain analysis given superior temporal resolution; however, difficult acoustic windows and limited contrast to noise resolution can limit strain analysis. Pre...

Background Delayed-enhancement magnetic resonance imaging (DEMRI) is highly effective for the diagnosis of myocardial infarction in both the acute and chronic phases, which is characterized as hyperenhancement after gadolinium injection. The use of gadolinium contrast, however, is limited in patients with advanced renal dysfunction and dialysis. On cine MRI, the signal intensity (SI) of noninfa...

Global and regional blood flow dynamics are of pivotal importance to cardiac function. Fluid mechanical forces can affect hemolysis and platelet aggregation, as well as myocardial remodeling. In recent years, assessment of blood flow patterns based on time-resolved, three-dimensional, three-directional phase-contrast magnetic resonance imaging (3D cine PC MRI)(1) has become possible and rapidly...