Table 1.

Averaged Results Obtained From Scans of Seven Normal Volunteers

Acquisition method	EPI ghost suppression method	Flip angle (N = 7)	TR (ms) (N = 7)	Efficiency (TS/TR) (%) (N = 7)	Increase in cardiac phases (%) (N = 7)	Reduction in breath-hold time (%) (N = 1)
One-echo SSFP	—	58°	3.57 ± 0.14	14 ± 1	—	—
Two-echo SSFP Bipolar	ETS	73°	6.02 ± 0.14	17 ± 1	21.0 ± 5.4	21.4
	PAGE	69°	5.05 ± 0.20	20 ± 1	43.0 ± 2.6	32.2
Two-echo SSFP Flyback	ETS	74°	6.00 ± 0.29	17 ± 1	21.7 ± 6.1	25.0
	PAGE	70°	5.16 ± 0.23	20 ± 2	40.8 ± 1.6	32.1
Three-echo SSFP	ETS	76°	6.28 ± 0.18	24 ± 1	72.2 ± 4.4	53.5
	PAGE	72°	5.32 ± 0.49	29 ± 3	108.3 ± 6.1	53.5

TR varied with slice orientation. Efficiency of data acquisition, defined as the ratio of sampling (readout) time to TR, varies slightly with slice orientation. The increase in TR allowed for increases in imaging flip angle due to reduced SAR constraints. The number of cardiac phases acquired for multishot EPI-SSFP increased relative to one-echo SSFP for scans where spatial resolution and breath-hold times were held constant. Breath-hold time decreased relative to one-echo SSFP for scans in which spatial resolution and number of cardiac phases were held constant. Note that because only discrete values of the views acquired per segment and echotrain length are used, the breath-hold duration did not always decrease.