Improved reconstruction of dynamic cardiac perfusion MRI with use of a reference frame

Lower spatial resolution can result when increasing the temporal resolution of dynamic imaging to track the uptake and washout of a bolus of paramagnetic contrast. This work investigates the maintenance or improvement of spatial resolution in ultra rapid dynamic cardiac MRI perfusion sequences when a higher resolution reference frame either from the same sequence, or from a steady-state cine sequence, is available. The generalized series and keyhole methods were used on dynamic data acquired with a bolus contrast injection. The image sequence of the heart region was extracted from the full field of view image sequence. The extracted images were registered for motion and also denoised before reconstruction by generalized series or keyhole methods was applied. Resolution improvement methods were used on low resolution data. Results were compared to the higher resolution data and showed improvement in resolution for the generalized series, with less artifacts than for the keyhole method.