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Non‐Cartesian balanced steady‐state free precession pulse sequences for real‐time cardiac MRI
Author(s) -
Feng Xue,
Salerno Michael,
Kramer Christopher M.,
Meyer Craig H.
Publication year - 2016
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.25738
Subject(s) - steady state free precession imaging , precession , pulse (music) , cartesian coordinate system , nuclear magnetic resonance , steady state (chemistry) , physics , magnetic resonance imaging , mathematics , medicine , radiology , chemistry , optics , quantum mechanics , geometry , detector
Purpose To develop a new spiral‐in/out balanced steady‐state free precession (bSSFP) pulse sequence for real‐time cardiac MRI and compare it with radial and spiral‐out techniques. Methods Non‐Cartesian sampling strategies are efficient and robust to motion and thus have important advantages for real‐time bSSFP cine imaging. This study describes a new symmetric spiral‐in/out sequence with intrinsic gradient moment compensation and SSFP refocusing at TE = TR /2. In vivo real‐time cardiac imaging studies were performed to compare radial, spiral‐out, and spiral‐in/out bSSFP pulse sequences. Furthermore, phase‐based fat/water separation taking advantage of the refocusing mechanism of the spiral‐in/out bSSFP sequence was also studied. Results The image quality of the spiral‐out and spiral‐in/out bSSFP sequences was improved with off‐resonance and k‐space trajectory correction. The spiral‐in/out bSSFP sequence had the highest signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR), contrast‐to‐noise ratio, and image quality ratings, with spiral‐out bSSFP sequence second in each category and the radial bSSFP sequence third. The spiral‐in/out bSSFP sequence provides separated fat and water images with no additional scan time. Conclusions In this study, a new spiral‐in/out bSSFP sequence was developed and tested. The superiority of spiral bSSFP sequences over the radial bSSFP sequence in terms of SNR and reduced artifacts was demonstrated in real‐time MRI of cardiac function without image acceleration. Magn Reson Med 75:1546–1555, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.