Cardiovascular diseases, as a group of disorders of the heart and blood vessels, are the number 1 cause of death globally. Early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases is of paramount importance. Dr. Fan’s lab has invested a great deal of effort in the development of non-contrast-enhanced MR techniques for accurate diagnosis of various cardiovascular diseases, such as cardiac abnormalities, peripheral arterial disease, deep vein thrombosis, and thoracic aortic disease.
We recently develop an MR MultiTasking (MT) based multi-dimensional assessment of cardiovascular system (MACS) with ECG- and navigator-free data acquisition to enable a comprehensive evaluation of thoracic aorta. The MT-MACS method adopted a low-rank tensor imaging model with a cardiac time dimension for phase-resolved cine imaging and a T1 recovery dimension for multi-contrast assessment. MT-MACS images reconstructed from acquisitions as short as 6 minutes demonstrated good or excellent image quality for bright-blood, dark-blood, and gray-blood contrast weightings, respectively. Analysis showed good agreement in the lumen and wall area and aortic strain between MT-MACS and conventional 2D sequences.
Representative Publications
- Xie G, Bi X, Liu J, Yang Q, Natsuaki Y, Conte A.H., Liu X, Li K, Li D, Fan Z. Three-dimensional coronary dark-blood interleaved with gray-blood (cDIG) magnetic resonance imaging at 3Tesla. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 2016;75:997-1007.
- Xie G, Chen H, He X, Liang J, Deng W, He Z, Ye Y, Yang Q, Bi X, Liu X, Li D, Fan Z. Black-blood thrombus imaging (BTI): a contrast-free cardiovascular magnetic resonance approach for the diagnosis of non-acute deep vein thrombosis. Journal of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance 2017;19:4.
- Zhang X, Xie G, Zhu Y, Wei Z, Su S, Shi C, Yan F, Liu X, Qiu B, Fan Z. 3D self-gated cardiac cine imaging at 3 Tesla using stack-of-stars bSSFP with tiny golden angles and compressed sensing. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 2019;81:3234-3244.
- Hu Z, Christodoulou AG, Wang N, Shaw JL, Song SS, Maya MM, Ishimori ML, Forbess LJ, Xiao J, Bi X, Han F, Li D, Fan Z. Magnetic resonance multitasking for multidimensional assessment of cardiovascular system: Development and feasibility study on the thoracic aorta. Magn Reson Med. 2020 Nov;84(5):2376-2388.
- Hu Z, Xiao J, Mao X, Xie Y, Kwan AC, Song SS, Fong MW, Wilcox AG, Li D, Christodoulou AG, Fan Z. MR Multitasking-based multi-dimensional assessment of cardiovascular system (MT-MACS) with extended spatial coverage and water-fat separation. Magn Reson Med. 2023 Apr;89(4):1496-1505.