Comparison between conventional and compressed sensing cine cardiovascular magnetic resonance for left atrial volume and strain assessment

Abstract Purpose: To investigate the feasibility of compressed sensing (CS) cine in quantifying left atrial (LA) volumes and strain assessments compared with conventional segmented cine.Methods: Segmented and CS cine sequences were acquired in 31 patients with LV diastolic dysfunction defined by echocardiography (21 males, age 51±15 years) and healthy volunteers (22 males, age 39±13 years) using an 3T MR scanner. LA volumes and strains were evaluated in both sequences. Results: There was excellent correlation for normalized LA volumes (ICCs ≥ 0.982), good correlation for LA EFs (ICCs ≥ 0.779) and moderate correlation for LA strains (ICCs ≥ 0.535) for both cines. Compared with segmented cine technique, LA passive EF from CS cine was not statistically different (segmented: 26.2 (10.7, 32.5) vs. CS: 24.9 (11.7, 35.4), p = 0.838), but radial and longitudinal strain derived by CS cine technique were markedly underestimated (all p < 0.001). The LA passive EF (EFpassive), passive radial and longitudinal strain values (Ere and Ele) from both cine techniques showed good diagnostic performance without significant differences in discriminating between patients and healthy controls (EFpassive, p=0.794; Ere, p=0.513; Ele, p=0.346).Conclusion: Compared with segmented cine, LA EFs obtained from CS cine were clinically comparable and LA strain parameters were underestimated. However, the performance of two cine methods to discriminate between patients with and without LV diastolic dysfunction is similar.