Elliot McVeigh, MD
Principal Investigator
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
National Institutes of Health

Interventional cardiac MR (CMR) has been undergoing rapid development because of the availability of MR compatible interventional catheters, and the increased performance of the MR systems themselves. Much of this development has benefited from the previous groundbreaking work in MRI guided surgical technologies; however, intravascular techniques do not carry the requirement for an open access scanner, and hence higher imaging performance during procedures can be achieved. Now, with the availability of a short, relatively open cylindrical scanner, high imaging performance is also available to guide direct surgical procedures.

One of the principal enabling technologies for guiding interventional procedures in the beating heart is real-time imaging. The obvious trade-off is between spatial resolution and temporal resolution, but this should be fully adjustable on an interactive system. With the development of multiple receiver systems, image acquisition can be accelerated using surface coil arrays.