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Simultaneous multislice acquisition with arterial‐flow tagging (SMART) using echo planar imaging (EPI)
Author(s) -
Kao YiHsuan,
Wan Xin,
MacFall James R.
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
magnetic resonance in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.696
H-Index - 225
eISSN - 1522-2594
pISSN - 0740-3194
DOI - 10.1002/mrm.1910390422
Subject(s) - multislice , echo planar imaging , echo (communications protocol) , computer science , nuclear magnetic resonance , magnetic resonance imaging , medicine , biomedical engineering , nuclear medicine , radiology , physics , computer network
Arterial spin tagging techniques have been used to image tissue perfusion in MR without contrast injection or ionizing radiation. Currently, spin tagging studies are performed primarily using single‐slice imaging sequences, which are time consuming. This note reports a multislice echo‐planar arterial spin tagging technique (Simultaneous Multislice Acquisition with aRterial‐flow Tagging, or “SMART”). Multiband RF encoding (Hadamard) is used to provide simultaneous multislice acquisition capability for spin tagging techniques (such as echo planar imaging signal targeting with alternating radio frequency and flow‐sensitive alternative inversion recovery). The method is illustrated with a two‐slice pulse sequence that was implemented using the FAIR technique to generate two perfusion weighted images simultaneously. Compared with single‐slice sequences, this two‐slice sequence provided similar image quality, signal‐to‐noise ratio, and twice the spatial coverage compared with the single‐slice technique within the same scan time.