Comparison of three diffusion encoding schemes for cardiac imaging under free breathing conditions.

Background Diffusion cardiac imaging has been challenging due to respiratory and heart motion. Recent developments in cardiac diffusion imaging proposed more robust spin echoes encoding scheme, like Acceleration Motion Correction(AMC)(1), to tackle cardiac motion. In addition, free breathing acquisition with prospective motion correction like slice following technique (2) has been shown to reduce efficiently and significantly the scan time. In this study, the effect of breathing motion on accuracy and precision using AMC, Stjekal-Tanner (Monopolar) and Twice Refocused Spin Echo (TRSE) encoding schemes combined with slice following was evaluated on a moving phantom. In-vivo comparison was achieved in volunteers.