Improved reproducibility in measuring LV volumes and mass using multicoil breath‐hold cine MR imaging

There is a generally recognized need for improvement in quality of fast cardiac MR images. Consequently, breath‐hold cine MR images were obtained with multiple surface coils connected to phased array receivers, and C/N, intra‐observer and inter‐observer variabilities for LV volumes and mass were evaluated. Two sets of short‐axis images of the LV, one with multiple surface coils and another with a body coil, were acquired in eight subjects with a fast cine MR sequence using k‐space segmentation (TR/TE=7/2.2 msec, temporal resolution=56 msec). C/N with multicoil imaging was 32.2 ± 7.6 (mean ± SD), significantly higher than that with a body coil (11.0 ± 3.3, P < .01). The mean percentage differences in intra‐observer and inter‐observer measurements with multicoil imaging were significantly better than those with a body coil. In conclusion, multicoil imaging provides significant gain in C/N on breath‐hold cine MRI of the heart. In addition, intra‐observer and inter‐observer reproducibilities are improved with multicoil imaging.