Accuracy of assuming uniform temporal sampling in the analysis of cardiac perfusion MRI datasets

E. V. DiBella, E. G. Kholmovski UCAIR, Radiology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States Introduction: Myocardial perfusion studies acquire images of multiple slices in each heart beat. It is typically assumed that the bolus tracking images are uniformly sampled in time. This is often not an accurate assumption, since ECG (or vectorcardiography) triggers can be missed, arrhythmias can occur, and heart rate can change. It is not known to what degree the inaccuracy of the uniform sampling assumption affects semi-quantitative or quantitative estimates of perfusion.