Anthony G. Christodoulou1,
Yijen L. Wu2, Qing Ye2, T. Kevin Hitchens2,
Chien Ho2, Zhi-Pei Liang1
1Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States; 2Pittsburgh NMR
Center for Biomedical Research, Department of Biological Sciences, Carnegie
Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
This abstract presents a real-time imaging method for noninvasive detection of acute heart transplant rejection. Real-time imaging is achieved using sparse sampling of (k, t)-space by exploiting the partial separability and sparsity of the cardiac signals. Both anatomical (i.e. ejection fraction) and functional (i.e. first-pass myocardial perfusion) assessments were enabled in a single real-time scan instead of from separate gated and triggered scans. The method has been validated on rats with allograft heart and lung transplants, with reduction in cardiac function evident after multiple post-operational days.