Demonstrating the Feasibility of Democratized Push-Button Autonomous Cardiac MRI exam in Community Family Health Centers (AutoCMR for FHC)

About This Grant

PROJECT SUMMARY The overall objective of this proposal is to show the feasibility of democratized and comprehensive cardiac imaging protocol using the combination of a push-button, time-resolved 3D cardiac magnetic resonance imaging protocol (AutoCMR) and automated report generation (CMR-TARGET) for the purpose of heart failure (HF) diagnosis in underserved community family health centers (FHC). The proposed end-to-end CMR protocol will enable CMR to be used at FHC sites which currently are unable to support CMR. CMR is an extremely complicated test to both operate and interpret. Operators need to be highly knowledgeable about MRI physics and cardiac anatomy to identify optimal viewing planes and scan parameters. The study itself is long and demanding on the patient requiring potentially dozens if not hundreds of breath-holds, something extremely difficult for patients with HF. Reading the study is also highly specialized, requiring hundreds of hours of additional training. Therefore, CMR is often limited to only a few major hospitals or highly specialized clinics, leading to disparities in rural and urban minority populations. Without access to advanced imaging, diagnosis and prognosis of HF leads to worst outcome. With this work, we hope to show increased access to CMR at regional sites using the two proposed technologies (AutoCMR and CMR-TARGET) and specifically show increased accessibility to CMR in the aforementioned disadvantaged populations.