Cardiac and Respiratory Self-Gated Motion-Corrected Free-Breathing Spiral Cine Imaging

A system for free-breathing cine imaging of an area of interest of a subject, comprising:

• a data acquisition device configured to acquire, during free breathing of the subject, magnetic resonance imaging data corresponding to an area of interest of a subject that comprises the heart, wherein the acquiring comprises applying a pulse sequence with a spiral trajectory;
• and
• one or more processors coupled to the data acquisition device and configured to cause the system to perform functions including:
• performing cardiac self-gating using a self-gating signal extracted from a central region of k-space;
• performing respiratory motion correction to compensate for changes in the heart position during respiratory motion, wherein the motion correction comprises rigid or non-rigid registration to determine corrective displacements;
• and
• performing image reconstruction to produce cine images of the area of interest over a plurality of heart-beats.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium having stored instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause a magnetic resonance imaging system to perform functions that comprise:

• acquiring, during free breathing of the subject, magnetic resonance imaging data corresponding to an area of interest of a subject that comprises the heart, wherein the acquiring comprises applying a pulse sequence with a spiral trajectory;
• performing cardiac self-gating using a self-gating signal extracted from a central region of k-space;
• performing respiratory motion correction to compensate for changes in the heart position during respiratory motion, wherein the motion correction comprises rigid or non-rigid registration to determine corrective displacements;
• and
• performing image reconstruction to produce cine images of the area of interest over a plurality of heart-beats.