Clinical methods for single-shot instant MR imaging of the heart

The authors have compared cardiac protocols for instant MR methods that acquire complete images in 32 msec. Four protocols are compared: continuous scanning at a fixed TR with retrospective reordering; pseudogating by using a TR 50 msec greater than the R-R interval; progressive time delay (PTD), in which the delay from the R wave is electronically advanced; and real-time (RT) imaging at 16 images/sec, which enabled complete movies to be obtained in a single heartbeat. Spin-echo techniques have been used for the first three protocols; the RT method used gradient echoes