Free-breathing pediatric cardiac dark-blood imaging with reverse double inversion-recovery and single-shot deep learning reconstruction
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Background: Dark-blood T2-weighted fast spin-echo (DB-FSE) is sensitive to motion, leading to signal dropout artifacts and ghosting artifacts in free-breathing pediatric cardiac imaging, which severely impairs its diagnostic quality. Here, we aimed to fulfill high-resolution motion-robust edema assessment during free-breathing by combining reverse double inversion recovery (RDIR) and single-shot DB-FSE based on artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted compressed sensing (ACS) reconstruction. Methods: This prospective study included 20 healthy children and 47 pediatric patients. Three imaging techniques were compared: routine multi-shot DB-FSE based on double inversion recovery (MS-DIR), multi-shot DB-FSE based on RDIR (MS-RDIR), and single-shot DB-FSE based on RDIR (SS-RDIR) with ACS reconstruction. These methods were compared via quantitative metrics, including total acquisition time, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and qualitative metrics, including myocardial visibility, ghosting artifacts, and overall quality. Results: 216.6±74.2, P<0.001) and MS-RDIR (229.8±79.2, P<0.001), with comparable SNR (P=0.065) and CNR (P=0.089). SS-RDIR also showed less severe ghosting artifacts (4.94±0.11) compared to MS-DIR (3.77±0.29, P<0.001) and MS-RDIR (3.78±0.34, P<0.001), and better quality (3.96±0.52) than MS-DIR (3.61±0.40, P=0.023). Conclusions: SS-RDIR with ACS reconstruction offers substantially shorter scan time and superior image quality than traditional multi-shot techniques. This approach enhances clinical workflow and patient comfort, facilitating a broader application of DB-FSE in pediatric cardiac imaging.
Authors: Yixin Emu, Quanli Shen, Qiong Yao, Guanke Cai, Zhuo Chen, Junpu Hu, Chenxi Hu, Xihong Hu
Language: English
Subfield: Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4409911321