TruHARP: single breath-hold MRI for high resolution cardiac motion and strain quantification

MRI techniques for tissue motion and strain quantifications have limited resolution because of interference from the conjugate echo or spectral peak in Fourier space. Methods have been proposed to remove this interference in order to improve resolution; however, these methods are clinically impractical due to long image acquisition time. In this paper, we propose TruHARP, an MRI motion and strain quantification methodology that involves a novel single breath-hold imaging protocol. In post-processing, TruHARP separates the spectral peaks in the acquired datasets, enabling high resolution motion and strain quantification. The impact of high resolution on circumferential and radial strain is studied using a realistic simulation and the improvement in strain maps is demonstrated in an in-vivo human study.