Customer Testimonial

"The FIESTA technique is extremely effective for cardiac function studies. FIESTA provides higher productivity because of the signal to noise ratio improvement and the blood/myocardium contrast to noise ratio enhancement. Because of the enhancement in the diagnostic confidence FIESTA offers the potential to replace gradient echo CINE techniques for the assessment of the cardiac function in our hospital."
--Oliver Strohm, MD

Overview

FIESTA is a fast imaging technique, which employs the steady-state free precession principle. Because of its intrinsic properties FIESTA provides an improved signal to noise ratio and an enhancement in the blood/myocardium signal-to-noise ratio compared to standard gradient echo techniques. FIESTA is extremely useful for breath-held CINE imaging for the assessment of the cardiac function, particularly for the slices not perpendicular to the blood inflow (long axis view).

Clinical Benefits

FIESTA provides a useful breath-hold sequence with an excellent native contrast between myocardium and ventricular cavity, especially in the long axis views. This is extremely important in patients with motion disturbances in the apex of the left ventricle, where standard gradient echo techniques can hardly distinguish between slow flow, ventricular wall thinning or thrombus formation. As seen in the example images, standard gradient echo sequences may miss apical aneurysm, which is clearly depicted by the FIESTA sequence.

Two Chamber View

Diastole  Systole Gradient Echo CINE FIESTA     Two Chamber View Diastole  Systole Gradient Echo CINE FIESTA

Two long-axis views (top: two-chamber view, bottom: four-chamber view) in diastole and in systole for both standard gradient echo CINE and FIESTA. Reduced ejection fration and a possible apical thinning of the wall is visualized. The enhanced blood/myocardium contrast to noise ratio obtained for the FIESTA data sets allows an easy visualization of the apical aneurysm. Imaging Protocol FIESTA Imaging Options TE TR alpha FOV Slice thickness Slice gap Data Matrix Phase FOV NEX  Trigger window Trigger delay: Views per segment: = gating, sequential, fast = 1.6ms = 3.6 = 40o = 32 cm = 8.0 mm = 0 mm = 256x192 = 1.00 = 1 = 10 minimum = 8-12

Key Technology

2D CINE FIESTA

Clinical Specifications

100% R-R coverage up to 60 fps temporal resolution with phased-array SNR.