Accuracy of short-axis cardiac MRI automatically derived from scout acquisitions in free-breathing and breath-holding modes.

To qualitatively assess the accuracy of automated cardiovascular magnetic resonance planning procedures devised from scout acquisitions in free-breathing and breath-holding modes, to quantitatively evaluate the accuracy of the derived left ventricular volumes, mass and function and compare these parameters with the ones obtained from the manually planned acquisitions. Ten healthy volunteers underwent cardiovascular MR (CMR) acquisitions for ventricular function assessment. Short-axis data sets of the left ventricle (LV) were manually planned and generated twice in an automatic fashion. Automated planning parameters were derived from gated scout acquisitions in free-breathing and breath-holding modes. End-diastolic volume (EDV), end-systolic volume (ESV), ejection fraction (EF), and left ventricular mass (LVM) were measured. The agreement between the manual and automatic planning methods, as well as the variability of the aforementioned measurements were assessed. The differences between two automated planning methods were also compared. The mean differences between the manual and automated CMR planning derived from gated scouts in free-breathing mode were 8.05 ml (EDV), 1.84 ml (ESV), 0.69% (EF), and 4.72 g (LVM). The comparison between manual and automated CMR planning derived from gated scouts in breath-holding mode yielded the following differences: 4.22 ml (EDV), 0.34 ml (ESV), 0.3% (EF), and -0.72 mg (LVM). The variability coefficients were 3.72 and 3.66 (EDV), 5.6 and 8.19 (ESV), 3.46 and 4.31 (EF), 6.49 and 5.20 (LVM) for the automated CMR planning methods derived from scouts in free-breathing and breath-holding modes, respectively. Automated CMR planning methods can provide accurate measurements of LV dimensions in normal subjects, and therefore may be utilized in the clinical environment to provide a cost-effective solution for functional assessment of the human cardiovascular system.