Simultaneous wall and blood-flow phase-contrast imaging using a single low VENC

Background Intra-ventricular blood flow and regional myocardial motion are two key components used in assessing cardiac function. Both can be quantified using phase contrast MRI, but typically require two imaging sequences to be acquired one with a high velocity encoding value (VENC) and one with a low VENC, selected to optimize velocity sensitivity while avoiding aliasing. In an effort to obtain velocity information from both ventricular blood and myocardial motion in one acquisition, dual-VENC techniques (Buchenberg, ISMRM 2011) have been proposed and evaluated.