Adaptive cardiovascular imaging: Challenges and opportunities for real-time processing

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has emerged as an important clinical tool because of its safety, versatility and high-quality images that allow accurate and reproducible quantification of cardiac structure and function. In cardiovascular MRI, the effective management of acyclic motion is driven by the ongoing demand for assessing cardiovascular anatomy and function with higher image resolution. An important application of real-time motion tracking in MRI is to capture mobile structures such as the cardiac valves. The improvement of MR hardware has allowed rapid imaging of the entire cardiac structure with much reduced imaging time. Adaptive imaging, generally, is essential for enhancing the intrinsic resolution of the imaging techniques as well as for capturing structural and functional information.