Motion correction using coil arrays (MOCCA) for free‐breathing cardiac cine MRI

In this study, we present a motion correction technique using coil arrays (MOCCA) and evaluate its application in free‐breathing respiratory self‐gated cine MRI. Motion correction technique using coil arrays takes advantages of the fact that motion‐induced changes in k‐space signal are modulated by individual coil sensitivity profiles. In the proposed implementation of motion correction technique using coil arrays self‐gating for free‐breathing cine MRI, the k‐space center line is acquired at the beginning of each k‐space segment for each cardiac cycle with 4 repetitions. For each k‐space segment, the k‐space center line acquired immediately before was used to select one of the 4 acquired repetitions to be included in the final self‐gated cine image by calculating the cross correlation between the k‐space center line with a reference line. The proposed method was tested on a cohort of healthy adult subjects for subjective image quality and objective blood‐myocardium border sharpness. The method was also tested on a cohort of patients to compare the left and right ventricular volumes and ejection fraction measurements with that of standard breath‐hold cine MRI. Our data indicate that the proposed motion correction technique using coil arrays method provides significantly improved image quality and sharpness compared with free‐breathing cine without respiratory self‐gating and provides similar volume measurements compared with breath‐hold cine MRI. Magn Reson Med, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.