The first focused meeting on the use of 3T MR for cardiovascular applications convened under National Institutes of Health sponsorship last September. Luminaries in MR technology and applications met in Washington, DC, for two days under the leadership of National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering director Dr. Roderic Pettigrew.
The first focused meeting on the use of 3T MR for cardiovascular applications convened under National Institutes of Health sponsorship last September. Luminaries in MR technology and applications met in Washington, DC, for two days under the leadership of National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering director Dr. Roderic Pettigrew.
The workshop was organized into seven sessions, each led by two key figures: a moderator and a rapporteur. The moderator introduced the speakers and summarized each talk at the end. The rapporteur provided a critical review at the end of each session as a means of preparing the audience for a brief discussion.
At the close of the conference, Paul Bottomley, Ph.D., and Dr. Robert Edelman provided scholarly overviews of what they considered the technical and clinical outcomes of the workshop, respectively. Several conclusions emerged:
Accompanying these improvements with 3T were several problems:
It was generally agreed that 3T imaging for cardiovascular studies leads to effective improvement in almost all aspects of cardiovascular imaging and would become the standard within the next few years. The few problems were thought to be surmountable. One is difficulty in using the gold standard of pulse sequences (SSFP) for imaging of ventricular function. A second is the increase in SAR at 3T, which could lead to deleterious effects. The problem of accurate SAR determination was something that industry could address with a little more investment.
Three-T could lead to the realization of the so-called one-stop shop, since all of the versatility of cardiovascular MR could be optimally expressed at 3T. The September workshop concluded with an almost universally high level of enthusiasm that 3T will become the new standard to replace 1.5T for cardiovascular imaging.
Dr. Pohost is a professor of cardiovascular medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and chief medical officer for Salick Cardiovascular Centers in Beverly Hills.
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