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Influence of respiration‐induced B 0 variations in real‐time phase‐contrast echo planar imaging of the cervical cerebrospinal fluid
Author(s) -
Peters Kristina,
Weiss Kilian,
Maintz David,
Giese Daniel
Publication year - 2019
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.27748
Subject(s) - respiration , amplitude , nuclear magnetic resonance , phase (matter) , contrast (vision) , magnetic resonance imaging , biomedical engineering , materials science , physics , chemistry , medicine , anatomy , optics , radiology , quantum mechanics
Purpose Respiration induces temporal variations of the main magnetic field B 0 along the spinal cord. These variations are typically not compensated for in velocity quantifications using phase‐contrast MRI. The goal of this study was to analyze errors caused by respiration‐induced B 0 variations in real‐time phase‐contrast echo planar imaging (PCEPI) of cervical cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) velocity measurements and to evaluate this effect for various sequence parameters using numerical simulations. Methods Real‐time B 0 measurements with double gradient echo sequence and PCEPI measurements were acquired in the cervical CSF of 10 healthy subjects. Dynamic phase offsets attributed to respiration‐induced B 0 variations were analyzed by quantifying amplitudes and comparing the temporal behavior with respiratory signals. In experiments and simulations, the influence of the echo time (TE) and the delay between PCEPI images (Δ t ) with respect to respiration on the dynamic phase offsets were investigated. Results A good agreement was found between phase offsets extracted from both acquisition types. Furthermore, respiratory signals qualitatively matched the temporal behavior of the measured phase offsets showing a dependency on subject‐dependent local B 0 distribution and respiration physiology. Simulations revealed residual background phases in PCEPI velocity quantification varying with TE and Δ t . Conclusion Respiration‐induced B 0 variations result in dynamic background phases in real‐time PCEPI velocity quantifications of the CSF in the cervical spine. The current work underlines that these background phases need to be corrected to avoid confounding effects.