A comparison of real-time radial GRAPPA and standard cine imaging for the evaluation of cardiac function in children and young adults

Background Segmented balanced steady state free precession (bSSFP) cine imaging is the gold standard MRI technique for assessing ventricular systolic function. The image acquisition involves ECG gating and is ideally performed during breath-hold to reduce artifacts from myocardial and respiratory motion. Real-time radial imaging with parallel imaging technique GRAPPA reconstruction (radial GRAPPA) utilizes a radial data collection scheme in combination with a through-time k-space GRAPPA technique to achieve high acceleration rates. As it is acquired during free-breathing and is not ECG-gated, it has the potential to dramatically shorten cardiac functional imaging time. As radial GRAPPA has previously only been validated in adult patients, our purpose is to compare image quality between bSSFP and radial GRAPPA for evaluating cardiac function in children and young adults.