Comparison between conventional and compressed sensing cine cardiovascular magnetic resonance for feature tracking global circumferential strain assessment

Abstract

Background: Feature tracking (FT) has become an established tool for cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR)-based strain analysis. Recently, the compressed sensing (CS) technique has been applied to cine CMR, which has drastically reduced its acquisition time. However, the effects of CS imaging on FT strain analysis need to be carefully studied. This study aimed to investigate the use of CS cine CMR for FT strain analysis compared to conventional cine CMR.

Methods: Sixty-five patients with different left ventricular (LV) pathologies underwent both retrospective conventional cine CMR and prospective CS cine CMR using a prototype sequence with the comparable temporal and spatial resolution at 3 T. Eight short-axis cine images covering the entire LV were obtained and used for LV volume assessment and FT strain analysis. Prospective CS cine CMR data over 1.5 heartbeats were acquired to capture the complete end-diastolic data between the first and second heartbeats. LV volume assessment and FT strain analysis were performed using a dedicated software (ci⁴²; Circle Cardiovasacular Imaging, Calgary, Canada), and the global circumferential strain (GCS) and GCS rate were calculated from both cine CMR sequences.

Results: There were no significant differences in the GCS (- 17.1% [- 11.7, - 19.5] vs. - 16.1% [- 11.9, - 19.3; p = 0.508) and GCS rate (- 0.8 [- 0.6, - 1.0] vs. - 0.8 [- 0.7, - 1.0]; p = 0.587) obtained using conventional and CS cine CMR. The GCS obtained using both methods showed excellent agreement (y = 0.99x - 0.24; r = 0.95; p < 0.001). The Bland-Altman analysis revealed that the mean difference in the GCS between the conventional and CS cine CMR was 0.1% with limits of agreement between -2.8% and 3.0%. No significant differences were found in all LV volume assessment between both types of cine CMR.

Conclusion: CS cine CMR could be used for GCS assessment by CMR-FT as well as conventional cine CMR. This finding further enhances the clinical utility of high-speed CS cine CMR imaging.

Keywords: Cardiovascular magnetic resonance; Compressed sensing; Feature tracking; Myocardial strain.

Fig. 1

End-diastolic short-axis images obtained using conventional cine cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) (a) and compressed sensing (CS) cine CMR (b)

Fig. 2

Example of strain assessment by CMR feature tracking (CMR-FT) in conventional (a, c) and CS cine CMR (b, d). The curves in the graph represent the similar global circumferential strains

Fig. 3

Scatter plots (a) and Bland–Altman plots (b) of global circumferential strain (GCS) measurements by CMR-FT. The solid line indicates the difference between the two sequences. The long-dashed lines represent the 95% agreement interval (i.e., the mean ± 1.96 SD). The short-dashed lines indicate the 95% confidence interval of the mean difference

Fig. 4

Bland–Altman plots of intra-observer variability of conventional (a) and CS (b) cine CMR. Bland–Altman plots of inter-observer variability of conventional (c) and CS (d) cine CMR. The solid line indicates the difference between the two sequences. The long-dashed lines represent the 95% agreement interval (i.e., the mean ± 1.96 SD). The short-dashed lines indicate the 95% confidence interval of the mean difference