Right Coronary Artery Flow Velocity and Volume Assessment With Spiral K-Space Sampled Breathhold Velocity-Encoded MRI at 3 Tesla: Accuracy and Reproducibility

Purpose: To evaluate accuracy and reproducibility of flow velocity and volume measurements in a phantom and in human coronary arteries using breathhold velocity-encoded (VE) MRI with spiral k-space sampling at 3 Tesla. Materials and Methods: Flow velocity assessment was performed using VE MRI with spiral k-space sampling. Accuracy of VE MRI was tested in vitro at five constant flow rates. Reproducibility was investigated in 19 healthy subjects (mean age 25.4 +/- 1.2 years, 11 men) by repeated acquisition in the right coronary artery (RCA). Results: MRI-measured flow rates correlated strongly with volumetric collection (Pearson correlation r = 0.99; P < 0.01). Due to limited sample resolution, VE MRI overestimated the flow rate by 47% on average when nonconstricted region-of-interest segmentation was used. Using constricted region-of-interest segmentation with lumen size equal to ground-truth luminal size, less than 13% error in flow rate was found. In vivo RCA flow velocity assessment was successful in 82% of the applied studies. High interscan, intra- and inter-observer agreement was found for almost all indices describing coronary flow velocity. Reproducibility for repeated acquisitions varied by less than 16% for peak velocity values and by less than 24% for flow volumes. Conclusion: 3T breathhold VE MRI with spiral k-space sampling enables accurate and reproducible assessment of RCA flow velocity.