Assessment of Ventricular Function with Single Breath-Hold Real-Time Steady-State Free Precession Cine MR Imaging

The aim of our study was to evaluate whether a recently developed real-time steady-state free precession (trueFISP) cine sequence could be used to assess left ventricular function in a single breath-hold. Using real-time trueFISP permits one to assess left ventricular function in a single breath-hold. The dramatic reduction in data acquisition time does require some compromises. The temporal and spatial resolutions of images obtained with real-time trueFISP were considerably lower than those achieved with segmented trueFISP. Further reduction of the TR or the use of sensitivity encoding could improve temporal resolution and eliminate other limitations of real-time trueFISP.