Patent ID: 8290567

Claim:
A workstation for providing cardiac diagnostic data to a clinician during a patient stress test, comprising: a circuit in communication with an MRI System configured to generate: (i) a plurality of temporally synchronized wall motion cine loops of MRI cardiac images of a patient at different heart beat rates during the cardiac stress test including, (a) a first baseline wall motion cine loop, (b) a second wall motion cine loop obtained after administration of a contrast agent, and (c) a third recovery wall motion cine loop obtained after the first and second cine loops; (ii) at least one MRI perfusion cine loop of MRI perfusion cardiac images of the patient, wherein a frame rate of the at least one MRI perfusion cine loop is substantially the same as a frame rate of the wall motion cine loops, and wherein the wall motion cine loops and the at least one perfusion cine loop are co-registered so that images of respective cine loops correspond to a substantially common cardiac location of the patient; and (iii) at least one delayed enhancement MRI image of cardiac tissue of the patient; and a display in communication with the circuit for displaying the cine loops and the at least one delayed enhancement MRI image of the cardiac tissue of the patient, wherein the circuit is configured to provide the temporally synchronized wall motion cine loops, the at least one perfusion cine loop and the at least one delayed enhancement image to the display so that the wall motion cine loops, the at least one perfusion cine loop and the at least one delayed enhancement image are concurrently shown in different windows on the display during a cardiac stress test while a patient is undergoing the cardiac stress test while in the MRI System for image data acquisition.