Assessment of cardiac time intervals using high temporal resolution real-time spiral phase contrast with UNFOLD-SENSE

Background Cardiac time intervals (CTI) provide information about systolic and diastolic function and can be measured using mitral valve (MV) and LV outflow tract (LVOT) Doppler velocity curves. Velocity curves produced by gated phase-contrast (PC) MR are not suitable for measurement of CTI due to distortion secondary to averaging across multiple heartbeats. Therefore, we developed a novel real-time spiral UNFOLD-SENSE PCMR sequence with high temporal resolution necessary to measure CTI. The purpose of this study was to i) validate CTI measurement against Doppler and; ii) assess CTI during exercise.