Researchers Demonstrate Faster and More Accurate Cardiac MRI Technique

Researchers in Switzerland have presented a new cardiac MR technique that makes use of a high-frequency percussive ventilator to prevent chest motion during scans, resulting in higher quality images and shorter scanning times.

The new technique was presented at the annual European Society of Cardiology EuroCMR meeting in Florence, Italy, that took place between May 12 and 14, 2016.

The research was designed to test the feasibility, and tolerability, of CMR scanning with high-frequency percussive ventilation, and was presented by researchers from the Cardiac MR Center at the University Hospital Lausanne (Lausanne, Switzerland). The study included a healthy 38-year-old volunteer and a 55 year-old patient suffering from a thymic lesion. The researchers asked the patients, who were conscious and not sedated, to wear masks, connected to a ventilator, over their mouths. The ventilator was configured so that it delivered small volumes of air in 300 to 500 ventilations per minute, without any chest movement. The ventilator had to be adapted for use in the CMR environment, by the replacement of metal components with MR-compatible ones. During the study there was no need to correct for respiratory motion. The new technique enabled clinicians to acquire all images in one session, without correction for respiratory motion.

Professor Juerg Schwitter, director, Cardiac MR Centre, University Hospital Lausanne, said, "We have made promising first steps with high frequency percussive ventilation in CMR. In future we could even imagine that if the patient is not breathing for 20 minutes or even longer this technique could give a precise 3D representation of cardiac structures and help guide electrophysiology procedures such as ablation. Patients do not need to breathe naturally and no correction for respiratory motion is required. This enables the physicians to more accurately plan the field of radiation to apply in each patient. This technique would help us to collect high-resolution images where we want millimetric precision, for example to localize scar in the myocardium or to see the anatomy of coronary arteries or valves and malformations. We would have much better conditions because we would not need to correct for motion."

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University Hospital Lausanne