Fig. 1

Tukey box plots of (a) imaging duration, (b) blood-to-myocardial contrast (BMC) normalized to myocardial signal, and (c) image quality scores for three short-axis acquisitions. Imaging duration includes gaps between breath-holds. One-to-one line plots (dotted black lines) for imaging duration with breath hold (BH) C-SENSE = 3 and free breathing (FB) C-SENSE = 3 depict the dependence of imaging duration on the patient’s heart rate–to–respiratory rate ratio. BMC of FB C-SENSE = 3 scan was significantly lower (p < 0.05) than both BH SENSE = 2 and BH C-SENSE = 3 acquisitions. Center red line = median, whiskers = minimum and maximum within 1.5 times interquartile distance, red ★ = outliers beyond 1.5 times the interquartile distance. Non-overlapping notches indicate that the medians of the two groups differ at the 5% significance level. Black * with bracket indicates two groups are significantly different (p < 0.05). ART = artifacts; CS3 C-SENSE acceleration factor of 3; EED = endocardial edge delineation; S2 SENSE acceleration factor of 2; TOT = total combined score