Numerical and Experimental Study of a Novel Phase Contrast Technique: Self Reference Phase-Contrast Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The quantitative measurement of blood flow using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been a topic of research for over twenty years. At present, blood flow measurements are largely performed using two-dimensional phase contrast magnetic resonance (PC-MR). However, when high acceleration terms are present (i.e., valve regurgitation or stenosis), accuracy of conventional (Con) cardiac PC-MR can suffer: when data are acquired at a relatively poor temporal resolution, the data extraction process, which essentially is one of comparison, makes the Con PC-MR data sensitive to temporal acceleration. Here, a novel PC-MR technique termed Self Reference (SR) PC-MR is introduced that overcomes these limitations by eliminating the need for comparing paired data sets.