Spin echo imaging using spin echoes acquired as a train. Typically a separate image is produced from each echo of the train.

Cardiovascular MR imaging includes the complete anatomical display of the heart with CINE imaging of all phases of the heartbeat. Ultrafast techniques make breath hold three-dimensional coverage of the heart in different cardiac axes feasible. Cardiac MRI provides reliable anatomical and functional assessment of the heart and evaluation of myocardial viability and coronary artery disease by a noninvasive diagnostic imaging technique.
Cardiovascular MRI offers potential advantages over radioisotopic techniques because it provides superior spatial resolution, does not use ionizing radiation, has no imaging orientations constraints and contrast resolution better than echocardiography. It also offers direct visualization and characterization of atherosclerotic plaques and diseased vessel walls and surrounding tissues in cardiovascular research.
MRI perfusion approaches measure the alteration of regional myocardial magnetic properties after the intravenous injection of contrast agents and assess the extent of injury after a myocardial infarction and the presence of myocardial viability with a technique based on late enhancement. Extracellular MRI contrast agents, like Gd-DTPA, accumulate only in irreversibly damaged myocardium after a time period of at least 10 minutes.
This type of patients may also have an implanted cardiac stent, bypass or a cardiac pacemaker and special caution should be observed on the MRI safety and the contraindications. While a number of coronary stents have been tested and reported to be MRI compatible, coronary stents must be assessed on an individual basis, with the medical team weighing the risks and benefits of the MRI procedure.

Cardiac MRI overview:

Cardiovascular MRI has become one of the most effective noninvasive imaging techniques for almost all groups of heart and vascular disease.

(CSI) Chemical shift imaging is an extension of MR spectroscopy, allowing metabolite information to be measured in an extended region and to add the chemical analysis of body tissues to the potential clinical utility of Magnetic Resonance. The spatial location is phase encoded and a spectrum is recorded at each phase encoding step to allow the spectra acquisition in a number of volumes covering the whole sample. CSI provides mapping of chemical shifts, analog to individual spectral lines or groups of lines.
Spatial resolution can be in one, two or three dimensions, but with long acquisition times od full 3D CSI. Commonly a slice-selected 2D acquisition is used. The chemical composition of each voxel is represented by spectra, or as an image in which the signal intensity depends on the concentration of an individual metabolite. Alternatively frequency-selective pulses excite only a single spectral component.
There are several methods of performing chemical shift imaging, e.g. the inversion recovery method, chemical shift selective imaging sequence, chemical shift insensitive slice selective RF pulse, the saturation method, spatial and chemical shift encoded excitation and quantitative chemical shift imaging.

See also Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy.

Fractional Nex imaging (GE Healthcare term for imaging with a Nex value less than 1) benefits from the conjugate symmetry of the k-space to reduce the number of phase encoding acquisitions. With fractional Nex imaging (similar to partial Fourier or Half Scan), just over half of the data are acquired and the data from the lower part of k-space are used to fill the upper part, without sampling the upper part. Fractional Nex imaging sequences use a number of excitations values between 0.5 and 1. These values are a bit misleading, because the number of phase encoding steps is reduced, and not the NEX.
Fractional Nex imaging reduces the scan time considerable, by preserving the same contrast between the tissues. The effect by acquiring fewer data points is that the signal to noise ratio decreases.

See also acronyms for 'partial averaging//fractional Nex imaging' from different manufacturers.

A usual variation of sequential plane imaging technique that can be used with selective excitation technique that does not affect adjacent slices. Since, in SE imaging TR longer than TE, the machine would be idling most of the time, if a single slice would be acquired; multiple slice imaging was introduced early on. Adjacent slices are imaged while waiting for relaxation of the first slice toward equilibrium, resulting in decreased image acquisition time for the set of slices. The maximum number of slices of a pulse sequence depends on the repetition time.