Magnetic resonance imaging planning in children with complex congenital heart disease - A new approach

Israel Valverde; Tarinee Tangcharoen; Tarique Hussain; Hubrecht de Bliek; Graeme Penney; Marcel Breeuwer; Tobias Schaeffter; Reza Razavi; Gerald Greil

doi:10.1177/2048004017701870

Magnetic resonance imaging planning in children with complex congenital heart disease - A new approach

JRSM Cardiovasc Dis. 2017 Apr 13:6:2048004017701870. doi: 10.1177/2048004017701870. eCollection 2017 Jan-Dec.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King s College London, London, UK.
² Division of Cardiology, Department of Internal Medicine, Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand.
³ University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, Pediatric Cardiology, Children's Medical Center, Dallas, TX, USA.
⁴ Healthcare Informatics/Patient Monitoring, Philips Healthcare, Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands.

Abstract

Objectives: To compare a standard sequential 2D Planning Method (2D-PM) with a 3D offline Planning Method (3D-PM) based on 3D contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance angiography (CE-MRA) in children with congenital heart disease (CHD).

Design: In 14 children with complex CHD (mean: 2.6 years, range: 3 months to 7.6 years), axial and coronal cuts were obtained with single slice spin echo sequences to get the final double oblique longitudinal cut of the targeted anatomical structure (2D-PM, n = 31). On a separate workstation, similar maximal intensity projection (MIP) images were generated offline from a 3D CE-MRA. MIP images were localizers for repeated targeted imaging using the previous spin echo sequence (3D-PM). Finally, image coverage, spatial orientation and acquisition time were compared for 2D-PM and 3D-PM.

Main outcome measures: 2D-PM and 3D-PM images were similar: both perfectly covered the selected anatomic regions and no spatial differences were found (p>0.05). The mean time for creation of the final imaging plane was 241 ± 31 s (2D-PM) compared to 71 ± 18 s (3D-PM) (p<0.05).

Conclusions: 3D-PM shows similar results compared to 2D-PM, but allows faster and offline planning thereby reducing the scan time significantly. As newly developed high-resolution 3D datasets can also be used further improvement of this technology is expected.

Keywords: Cardiology; cardiovascular imaging agents/techniques; cardiovascular surgery; diagnostic testing; pediatric and congenital heart disease including cardiovascular surgery.