Water-fat separation imaging of the heart with standard magnetic resonance bSSFP CINE imaging

Frequency-modulated bSSFP for phase-sensitive separation of water and fat

Our study proposes the use of a frequency-modulated acquisition which suppresses banding artefacts in combination with a phase-sensitive water-fat separation algorithm. The performance of the phase-sensitive separation for standard bSSFP, complex sum combination thereof, and frequency-modulated bSSFP were compared in in vivo measurements of the upper and lower legs at 1.5 and 3 T. It is shown, that the standard acquisition suffered from banding artefacts and major swaps between tissues. The dual-acquisition bSSFP could alleviate banding artefacts and only minor swaps occurred, but it comes at the expense of a doubled acquisition. In the frequency-modulated acquisitions all banding artefacts and the associated phase jumps were eliminated and no swaps between tissues occurred. It therefore provides a means to robustly separate water and fat, in one single radial bSSFP scan, using the phase-sensitive approach, even in the presence of high field inhomogeneities.

Method of B0 mapping with magnitude-based correction for bipolar two-point Dixon cardiac MRI

PURPOSE

The conventional two-point (2pt) Dixon technique explicitly estimates B0 map by performing phase unwrapping. When signal loss, phase singularity, artifacts, or spatially isolated regions corrupt the measured phase images, this unwrapping-based technique will face difficulty. This work aims to improve the reliability of B0 mapping by performing unwrapping error correction.

METHOD

To detect the unwrapping-caused phase errors, we determined a magnitude-based fat/water mask and used it as reference to identify pixels being mismatched by the phase-based mask, which was derived from the B0-corrected phase term of the Hermitian product between echoes. Then, we corrected the afore-determined phase error on a region-by-region basis. We tested the developed method with nine patients' data, and the results were compared with a well-established region-growing technique.

RESULTS

By adding the step to correct unwrapping-caused error, we improved the robustness of B0 mapping, resulting in better fat-water separation when compared with the conventional 2pt and the phasor-based region-growing techniques.

CONCLUSION

We showed the feasibility of B0 mapping with bipolar 2pt human cardiac data. The software is freely available to the scientific community. Magn Reson Med 78:1862-1869, 2017. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

Self-gated fat-suppressed cardiac cine MRI

PURPOSE

To develop a self-gated alternating repetition time balanced steady-state free precession (ATR-SSFP) pulse sequence for fat-suppressed cardiac cine imaging.

METHODS

Cardiac gating is computed retrospectively using acquired magnetic resonance self-gating data, enabling cine imaging without the need for electrocardiogram (ECG) gating. Modification of the slice-select rephasing gradients of an ATR-SSFP sequence enables the acquisition of a one-dimensional self-gating readout during the unused short repetition time (TR). Self-gating readouts are acquired during every TR of segmented, breath-held cardiac scans. A template-matching algorithm is designed to compute cardiac trigger points from the self-gating signals, and these trigger points are used for retrospective cine reconstruction. The proposed approach is compared with ECG-gated ATR-SSFP and balanced steady-state free precession in 10 volunteers and five patients.

RESULTS

The difference of ECG and self-gating trigger times has a variability of 13 ± 11 ms (mean ± SD). Qualitative reviewer scoring and ranking indicate no statistically significant differences (P > 0.05) between self-gated and ECG-gated ATR-SSFP images. Quantitative blood-myocardial border sharpness is not significantly different among self-gated ATR-SSFP ( 0.61±0.15 mm -1), ECG-gated ATR-SSFP ( 0.61±0.15 mm -1), or conventional ECG-gated balanced steady-state free precession cine MRI ( 0.59±0.15 mm -1).

CONCLUSION

The proposed self-gated ATR-SSFP sequence enables fat-suppressed cardiac cine imaging at 1.5 T without the need for ECG gating and without decreasing the imaging efficiency of ATR-SSFP.