{"doi":"10.1002/mrm.29168","title":"Intracardiac MR imaging (ICMRI) guiding‐sheath with amplified expandable‐tip imaging and MR‐tracking for navigation and arrythmia ablation monitoring: Swine testing at 1.5 and 3T","abstract":"PURPOSE: Develop a deflectable intracardiac MR imaging (ICMRI) guiding-sheath to accelerate imaging during MR-guided electrophysiological (EP) interventions for radiofrequency (500 kHz) ablation (RFA) of arrythmia. Requirements include imaging at three to five times surface-coil SNR in cardiac chambers, vascular insertion, steerable-active-navigation into cardiac chambers, operation with ablation catheters, and safe levels of MR-induced heating. METHODS: ICMRI's 6 mm outer-diameter (OD) metallic-braided shaft had a 2.6 mm OD internal lumen for ablation-catheter insertion. Miniature-Baluns (MBaluns) on ICMRI's 1 m shaft reduced body-coil-induced heating. Distal section was a folded \"star\"-shaped imaging-coil mounted on an expandable frame, with an integrated miniature low-noise-amplifier overcoming cable losses. A handle-activated movable-shaft expanded imaging-coil to 35 mm OD for imaging within cardiac-chambers. Four MR-tracking micro-coils enabled navigation and motion-compensation, assuming a tetrahedron-shape when expanded. A second handle-lever enabled distal-tip deflection. ICMRI with a protruding deflectable EP catheter were used for MR-tracked navigation and RFA using a dedicated 3D-slicer user-interface. ICMRI was tested at 3T and 1.5T in swine to evaluate (a) heating, (b) cardiac-chamber access, (c) imaging field-of-view and SNR, and (d) intraprocedural RFA lesion monitoring. RESULTS: FOV in the heart, relative to body and spine arrays. ICMRI with MBaluns met ASTM/IEC heating limits during navigation. Tip-deflection allowed navigating ICMRI and EP catheter into atria and ventricles. Acute-lesion long-inversion-time-T1-weighted 3D-imaging (TWILITE) ablation-monitoring using ICMRI required 5:30 min, half the time needed with surface arrays alone. CONCLUSION: ICMRI assisted EP-catheter navigation to difficult targets and accelerated RFA monitoring.","journal":"Magnetic Resonance in Medicine","year":2022,"id":284603,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":5,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9538,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":962845,"name":"Gregory Olson","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":338933,"name":"Junichi Tokuda","orcid":"0000-0003-2358-7484","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":688027,"name":"Akbar Alipour","orcid":"0000-0002-7981-6808","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":398767,"name":"Ronald D. Watkins","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":787415,"name":"Eric Meyer","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":786883,"name":"Hassan Elahi","orcid":"0000-0002-2345-3139","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":962369,"name":"William G. Stevenson","orcid":"0000-0002-2118-7893","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":962846,"name":"Jeffrey Schweitzer","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":510480,"name":"Charles L. Dumoulin","orcid":"0000-0002-0328-5174","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":962370,"name":"Thomas R. Johnson","orcid":"0000-0003-4541-121X","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":771310,"name":"Aravindan Kolandaivelu","orcid":"0000-0003-3128-765X","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":511134,"name":"Wolfgang Loew","orcid":null,"position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":375582,"name":"Henry R. Halperin","orcid":null,"position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":705076,"name":"Ehud J. Schmidt","orcid":"0000-0002-5792-2087","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":47,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:29:36.828109Z","pmid":"35142398","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}