Fig. 1

a Evolution of myocardial thickness over the cardiac cycle based on cine outlines. Shaded circles and open squares respectively indicate the acquired positions from the R-wave and the estimates of myocardial thickness from the short and normal readout variants of ShMOLLI studied in this work. Note that myocardial thickness from T1 maps is less by ~1 pixel on each outline (2 mm altogether) to avoid partial-volume impact on T1. b Elements of pulse sequence that limit the TD range: the duration of inversion pulse, required delays to achieve the range of inversion times (TI) and readout duration outside of the k-space centre. Short readout ShMOLLI achieved earlier TT by reducing TI increments from 80 to 60 ms. The relationship between prescribed TD range, resulting MOLLI TD range and practically achievable TT range is also illustrated