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 fas t cardiac MR images, Consequently, breath-hold cine MR images were obt ained with multiple surface coils connected to phased array receivers, and C/N, intra-observer and inter-observer variabilities for LV volum es and mass were evaluated, Two sets of short-arris images of the LV, one with multiple surface coils and another with a body coil, were acq uired in eight subjects with a fast cine MR sequence using k-space seg mentation (TR/TE = 7/2.2 msec, temporal resolution = 56 msec). C/N wit h multicoil imaging was 32.2 +/- 7.6 (mean +/- SD), significantly high er than that with a body coil (11.0 +/- 3.3, P < .01), The mean percen tage differences in intra-observer and inter-observer measurements wit h multicoil imaging were significantly better than those with a body c oil, 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.