Impact of motion correction on reproducibility and spatial variability of quantitative myocardial T(2) mapping

BACKGROUND: To evaluate and quantify the impact of a novel image-based motion correction technique in myocardial T(2) mapping in terms of measurement reproducibility and spatial variability. METHODS: Twelve healthy adult subjects were imaged using breath-hold (BH), free breathing (FB), and free breathing with respiratory navigator gating (FB + NAV) myocardial T(2) mapping sequences. Fifty patients referred for clinical CMR were imaged using the FB + NAV sequence. All sequences used a T(2) prepared (T(2)prep) steady-state free precession acquisition. In-plane myocardial motion was corrected using an adaptive registration of varying contrast-weighted images for improved tissue characterization (ARCTIC). DICE similarity coefficient (DSC) and myocardial boundary errors (MBE) were measured to quantify the motion estimation accuracy in healthy subjects. T(2) mapping reproducibility and spatial variability were evaluated in healthy subjects using 5 repetitions of the FB + NAV sequence with either 4 or 20 T(2)prep echo times (TE). Subjective T(2) map quality was assessed in patients by an experienced reader using a 4-point scale (1-non diagnostic, 4-excellent). RESULTS: ARCTIC led to increased DSC in BH data (0.85 ± 0.08 vs. 0.90 ± 0.02, p = 0.007), FB data (0.78 ± 0.13 vs. 0.90 ± 0.21, p < 0.001), and FB + NAV data (0.86 ± 0.05 vs. 0.90 ± 0.02, p = 0.002), and reduced MBE in BH data (0.90 ± 0.40 vs. 0.64 ± 0.19 mm, p = 0.005), FB data (1.21 ± 0.65 vs. 0.63 ± 0.10 mm, p < 0.001), and FB + NAV data (0.81 ± 0.21 vs. 0.63 ± 0.08 mm, p < 0.001). Improved reproducibility (4TE: 5.3 ± 2.5 ms vs. 4.0 ± 1.5 ms, p = 0.016; 20TE: 3.9 ± 2.3 ms vs. 2.2 ± 0.5 ms, p = 0.002), reduced spatial variability (4TE: 12.8 ± 3.5 ms vs. 10.3 ± 2.5 ms, p < 0.001; 20TE: 9.7 ± 3.5 ms vs. 7.5 ± 1.4 ms) and improved subjective score of T(2) map quality (3.43 ± 0.79 vs. 3.69 ± 0.55, p < 0.001) were obtained using ARCTIC. CONCLUSIONS: The ARCTIC technique substantially reduces spatial mis-alignment among T(2)-weighted images and improves the reproducibility and spatial variability of in-vivo T(2) mapping.