Comparison of Standard Breath-hold Cardiac MRI With a Faster, Free-breathing Scan

This is a single-centre prospective study involving up to 570 patients with known or suspected cardiac disease referred for routine clinical cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) assessment at Glenfield General Hospital, Leicester. In addition to standard multi-breath-hold steady-state free precession (SSFP) imaging (undertaken as part of the routine scan), each patient will also undergo additional imaging with a non-breath-hold multi-slice real-time cine sequence.

The primary outcome is the assessment of cardiac volumetry and function (end-diastolic volume, end-systolic volume, stroke volume, ejection fraction and myocardial mass) as measured by (1) the standard multi-breath-hold SSFP technique and (2) the non-breath-hold multi-slice real-time cine sequence. Secondary outcome measures will be (1) the time required for each scan, and (2) image quality for each scan. An additional secondary outcome will be to compare indexed cardiac volumes with those indexed according to measured body-surface area.