The aim of this study is to develop and evaluate a regularized Simultaneous Multi-Slice (SMS) reconstruction method for improved Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Imaging (CMR). The proposed reconstruction method, SMS with COmpOsition of k-space IntErpolations (SMS-COOKIE) combines the advantages of Iterative Self-consistent Parallel Imaging Reconstruction (SPIRiT) and split slice-Generalized Autocalibrating Partially Parallel Acquisitions (GRAPPA), while allowing regularization for further noise reduction. The proposed SMS-COOKIE was implemented with and without regularization, and validated using a Saturation Pulse-Prepared Heart rate Independent inversion REcovery (SAPPHIRE) myocardial T ₁ mapping sequence. The performance of the proposed reconstruction method was compared to ReadOut (RO)–SENSE-GRAPPA and split slice-GRAPPA, on both retrospectively and prospectively three-fold SMS-accelerated data with an additional two-fold in-plane acceleration. All SMS reconstruction methods yielded similar T ₁ values compared to single band imaging. SMS-COOKIE showed lower spatial variability in myocardial T ₁ with significant improvement over RO-SENSE-GRAPPA and split slice-GRAPPA (P < 10 ⁻⁴). The proposed method with additional locally low rank (LLR) regularization reduced the spatial variability, again with significant improvement over RO-SENSE-GRAPPA and split slice-GRAPPA (P < 10 ⁻⁴). In conclusion, improved reconstruction quality was achieved with the proposed SMS-COOKIE, which also provided lower spatial variability with significant improvement over split slice-GRAPPA.

Purpose: The aim of this study is to develop and optimize an adiabatic (Formula presented.) ((Formula presented.)) mapping method for robust quantification of spin-lock (SL) relaxation in the myocardium at 3T. Methods: Adiabatic SL (aSL) preparations were optimized for resilience against (Formula presented.) and (Formula presented.) inhomogeneities using Bloch simulations. Optimized (Formula presented.) -aSL, Bal-aSL and (Formula presented.) -aSL modules, each compensating for different inhomogeneities, were first validated in phantom and human calf. Myocardial (Formula presented.) mapping was performed using a single breath-hold cardiac-triggered bSSFP-based sequence. Then, optimized (Formula presented.) preparations were compared to each other and to conventional SL-prepared (Formula presented.) maps (RefSL) in phantoms to assess repeatability, and in 13 healthy subjects to investigate image quality, precision, reproducibility and intersubject variability. Finally, aSL and RefSL sequences were tested on six patients with known or suspected cardiovascular disease and compared with LGE, (Formula presented.), and ECV mapping. Results: The highest (Formula presented.) preparation efficiency was obtained in simulations for modules comprising 2 HS pulses of 30 ms each. In vivo (Formula presented.) maps yielded significantly higher quality than RefSL maps. Average myocardial (Formula presented.) values were 183.28 (Formula presented.) 25.53 ms, compared with 38.21 (Formula presented.) 14.37 ms RefSL-prepared (Formula presented.). (Formula presented.) maps showed a significant improvement in precision (avg. 14.47 (Formula presented.) 3.71% aSL, 37.61 (Formula presented.) 19.42% RefSL, p < 0.01) and reproducibility (avg. 4.64 (Formula presented.) 2.18% aSL, 47.39 (Formula presented.) 12.06% RefSL, p < 0.0001), with decreased inter-subject variability (avg. 8.76 (Formula presented.) 3.65% aSL, 51.90 (Formula presented.) 15.27% RefSL, p < 0.0001). Among aSL preparations, (Formula presented.) -aSL achieved the better inter-subject variability. In patients, (Formula presented.) -aSL preparations showed the best artifact resilience among the adiabatic preparations. (Formula presented.) times show focal alteration colocalized with areas of hyper-enhancement in the LGE images. Conclusion: Adiabatic preparations enable robust in vivo quantification of myocardial SL relaxation times at 3T.

Ischemic heart disease (IHD) is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Myocardial infarction (MI) represents a third of all IHD cases, and cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is often used to assess its damage to myocardial viability. Late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) is the current gold standard, but the use of gadolinium-based agents limits the clinical applicability in some patients. Spin-lock (SL) dispersion has recently been proposed as a promising non-contrast biomarker for the assessment of MI. However, at 3T, the required range of SL preparations acquired at different amplitudes suffers from specific absorption rate (SAR) limitations and off-resonance artifacts. Relaxation Along a Fictitious Field (RAFF) is an alternative to SL preparations with lower SAR requirements, while still sampling relaxation in the rotating frame. In this study, a single breath-hold simultaneous TRAFF2 and T2 mapping sequence is proposed for SL dispersion mapping at 3T. Excellent reproducibility (coefficient of variations lower than 10%) was achieved in phantom experiments, indicating good intrascan repeatability. The average myocardial TRAFF2, T2, and SL dispersion obtained with the proposed sequence (68.0±10.7 ms, 44.0±4.0 ms, and 0.4±0.2 ×10-4 s2, respectively) were comparable to the reference methods (62.7±11.7 ms, 41.2±2.4 ms, and 0.3±0.2x 10-4s2, respectively). High visual map quality, free of B0 and B1+ related artifacts, for T2, TRAFF2, and SL dispersion maps were obtained in phantoms and in vivo, suggesting promise in clinical use at 3T. Clinical relevance - and imaging promises non-contrast assessment of scar and focal fibrosis in a single breath-hold using approximate spin-lock dispersion mapping.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is the clinical gold standard for the assessment of myocardial viability but requires injection of exogenous gadolinium-based contrast agents. Recently, T1ρ-mapping has been proposed as a fully non-invasive alternative for imaging myocardial fibrosis without the need for contrast agent injection. However, its applicability at high fields is hindered by susceptibility to MRI system imperfections, such as inhomogeneities in the B0 and B1+ fields. In this work we propose a single breath-hold ECG-triggered single-shot bSSFP sequence to enable T1ρ-mapping in vivo at 3T. Adiabatic T1ρ preparations are evaluated to reduce B0 and B1+ sensitivity in comparison with conventional spin-lock (SL) modules. Numerical Bloch simulations were performed to identify optimal parameters for the adiabatic pulses. Experiments yield T1ρ values in the myocardium equal to 48.13±54.08 ms for the best adiabatic preparation and 16.01±20.75 ms for the reference non-adiabatic SL, with 26.91% against 89.74% relative difference in T1ρ values across two shimming conditions. Both phantom and in vivo measurements show increased myocardium/blood contrast and improved resilience against system imperfections compared to non-adiabatic T1ρ preparations, enabling the use at 3T. Clinical relevance- Adiabatically-prepared T1ρ-mapping sequences form a promising candidate for non-contrast evaluation of ischemic and non-ischemic cardiomyopathies at 3T.

Purpose: To develop a physics-guided deep learning (PG-DL) reconstruction strategy based on a signal intensity informed multi-coil (SIIM) encoding operator for highly-accelerated simultaneous multislice (SMS) myocardial perfusion cardiac MRI (CMR). Methods: First-pass perfusion CMR acquires highly-accelerated images with dynamically varying signal intensity/SNR following the administration of a gadolinium-based contrast agent. Thus, using PG-DL reconstruction with a conventional multi-coil encoding operator leads to analogous signal intensity variations across different time-frames at the network output, creating difficulties in generalization for varying SNR levels. We propose to use a SIIM encoding operator to capture the signal intensity/SNR variations across time-frames in a reformulated encoding operator. This leads to a more uniform/flat contrast at the output of the PG-DL network, facilitating generalizability across time-frames. PG-DL reconstruction with the proposed SIIM encoding operator is compared to PG-DL with conventional encoding operator, split slice-GRAPPA, locally low-rank (LLR) regularized reconstruction, low-rank plus sparse (L + S) reconstruction, and regularized ROCK-SPIRiT. Results: Results on highly accelerated free-breathing first pass myocardial perfusion CMR at three-fold SMS and four-fold in-plane acceleration show that the proposed method improves upon the reconstruction methods use for comparison. Substantial noise reduction is achieved compared to split slice-GRAPPA, and aliasing artifacts reduction compared to LLR regularized reconstruction, L + S reconstruction and PG-DL with conventional encoding. Furthermore, a qualitative reader study indicated that proposed method outperformed all methods. Conclusion: PG-DL reconstruction with the proposed SIIM encoding operator improves generalization across different time-frames /SNRs in highly accelerated perfusion CMR.

Dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) MRI acquires a series of images following the administration of a contrast agent, and plays an important clinical role in diagnosing various diseases. DCE MRI typically necessitates rapid imaging to provide sufficient spatio-temporal resolution and coverage. Conventional MRI acceleration techniques exhibit limited image quality at such high acceleration rates. Recently, deep learning (DL) methods have gained interest for improving highly-accelerated MRI. However, DCE MRI series show substantial variations in SNR and contrast across images. This hinders the quality and generalizability of DL methods, when applied across time frames. In this study, we propose signal intensity informed multi-coil MRI encoding operator for improved DL reconstruction of DCE MRI. The output of the corresponding inverse problem for this forward operator leads to more uniform contrast across time frames, since the proposed operator captures signal intensity variations across time frames while not altering the coil sensitivities. Our results in perfusion cardiac MRI show that high-quality images are reconstructed at very high acceleration rates, with substantial improvement over existing methods.

Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can enable early diagnosis of knee cartilage damage if imaging is performed during the application of load. Mechanical loading via ropes, pulleys and suspended weights can be obstructive and require adaptations to the patient table. In this paper, a new lightweight MRI-compatible elastic loading mechanism is introduced. The new device showed sufficient linearity (|α/β| = 0.42 ± 0.25), reproducibility (CoV = 5 ± 2%), and stability (CoV = 0.5 ± 0.1%). In vivo and ex vivo scans confirmed the ability of the device to exert sufficient force to study the knee cartilage under loading conditions, inducing up to a 29% decrease in T2 of the central medial cartilage. With this device mechanical loading can become more accessible for researchers and clinicians, thus facilitating the translational use of MRI biomarkers for the detection of cartilage deterioration.

Purpose: To implement a free-breathing sequence for simultaneous quantification of (Formula presented.), (Formula presented.), and (Formula presented.) for comprehensive tissue characterization of the myocardium in a single scan using a multi-gradient-echo readout with saturation and (Formula presented.) preparation pulses. Methods: In the proposed Saturation And (Formula presented.) -prepared Relaxometry with Navigator-gating (SATURN) technique, a series of multi-gradient-echo (GRE) images with different magnetization preparations was acquired during free breathing. A total of 35 images were acquired in 26.5 ± 14.9 seconds using multiple saturation times and (Formula presented.) preparation durations and with imaging at 5 echo times. Bloch simulations and phantom experiments were used to validate a 5-parameter fit model for accurate relaxometry. Free-breathing simultaneous (Formula presented.), (Formula presented.), and (Formula presented.) measurements were performed in 10 healthy volunteers and 2 patients using SATURN at 3T and quantitatively compared to conventional single-parameter methods such as SASHA for (Formula presented.), (Formula presented.) -prepared bSSFP, and multi-GRE for (Formula presented.). Results: Simulations confirmed accurate fitting with the 5-parameter model. Phantom measurements showed good agreement with the reference methods in the relevant range for in vivo measurements. Compared to single-parameter methods comparable accuracy was achieved. SATURN produced in vivo parameter maps that were visually comparable to single-parameter methods. No significant difference between (Formula presented.), (Formula presented.), and (Formula presented.) times acquired with SATURN and single-parameter methods was shown in quantitative measurements (SATURN (Formula presented.), (Formula presented.), (Formula presented.); conventional methods: (Formula presented.), (Formula presented.), (Formula presented.); (Formula presented.)). Conclusion: SATURN enables simultaneous quantification of (Formula presented.), (Formula presented.), and (Formula presented.) in the myocardium for comprehensive tissue characterization with co-registered maps, in a single scan with good agreement to single-parameter methods.

Purpose: To develop and evaluate a simultaneous multislice (SMS) reconstruction technique that provides noise reduction and leakage blocking for highly accelerated cardiac MRI. Methods: ReadOut Concatenated k-space SPIRiT (ROCK-SPIRiT) uses the concept of readout concatenation in image domain to represent SMS encoding, and performs coil self-consistency as in SPIRiT-type reconstruction in an extended k-space, while allowing regularization for further denoising. The proposed method is implemented with and without regularization, and validated on retrospectively SMS-accelerated cine imaging with three-fold SMS and two-fold in-plane acceleration. ROCK-SPIRiT is compared with two leakage-blocking SMS reconstruction methods: readout-SENSE-GRAPPA and split slice–GRAPPA. Further evaluation and comparisons are performed using prospectively SMS-accelerated cine imaging. Results: Results on retrospectively three-fold SMS and two-fold in-plane accelerated cine imaging show that ROCK-SPIRiT without regularization significantly improves on existing methods in terms of PSNR (readout-SENSE-GRAPPA: 33.5 ± 3.2, split slice–GRAPPA: 34.1 ± 3.8, ROCK-SPIRiT: 35.0 ± 3.3) and SSIM (readout-SENSE-GRAPPA: 84.4 ± 8.9, split slice–GRAPPA: 85.0 ± 8.9, ROCK-SPIRiT: 88.2 ± 6.6 [in percentage]). Regularized ROCK-SPIRiT significantly outperforms all methods, as characterized by these quantitative metrics (PSNR: 37.6 ± 3.8, SSIM: 94.2 ± 4.1 [in percentage]). The prospectively five-fold SMS and two-fold in-plane accelerated data show that ROCK-SPIRiT and regularized ROCK-SPIRiT have visually improved image quality compared with existing methods. Conclusion: The proposed ROCK-SPIRiT technique reduces noise and interslice leakage in accelerated SMS cardiac cine MRI, improving on existing methods both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Purpose To accelerate coronary MRI acquisitions with arbitrary undersampling patterns by using a novel reconstruction algorithm that applies coil self-consistency using subject-specific neural networks. Methods Self-consistent robust artificial-neural-networks for k-space interpolation (sRAKI) performs iterative parallel imaging reconstruction by enforcing self-consistency among coils. The approach bears similarity to SPIRiT, but extends the linear convolutions in SPIRiT to nonlinear interpolation using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). These CNNs are trained individually for each scan using the scan-specific autocalibrating signal (ACS) data. Reconstruction is performed by imposing the learned self-consistency and data-consistency, which enables sRAKI to support random undersampling patterns. Fully-sampled targeted right coronary artery MRI was acquired in six healthy subjects. The data were retrospectively undersampled, and reconstructed using SPIRiT, l₁-SPIRiT and sRAKI for acceleration rates of 2 to 5. Additionally, prospectively undersampled whole-heart coronary MRI was acquired to further evaluate reconstruction performance. Results sRAKI reduces noise amplification and blurring artifacts compared with SPIRiT and l₁-SPIRiT, especially at high acceleration rates in targeted coronary MRI. Quantitative analysis shows that sRAKI outperforms these techniques in terms of normalized mean-squared-error (~44% and ~21% over SPIRiT and ‘₁-SPIRiT at rate 5) and vessel sharpness (~10% and ~20% over SPIRiT and l₁-SPIRiT at rate 5). Whole-heart data shows the sharpest coronary arteries when resolved using sRAKI, with 11% and 15% improvement in vessel sharpness over SPIRiT and l₁-SPIRiT, respectively. Conclusion sRAKI is a database-free neural network-based reconstruction technique that may further accelerate coronary MRI with arbitrary undersampling patterns, while improving noise resilience over linear parallel imaging and image sharpness over l₁ regularization techniques.

Perfusion cardiac MRI (CMR) is a radiation-free and noninvasive imaging tool which has gained increasing interest for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease. However, resolution and coverage are limited in perfusion CMR due to the necessity of single snap-shot imaging during the first-pass of a contrast agent. Simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) imaging has the potential for high acceleration rates with minimal signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) loss. However, its utility in CMR has been limited to moderate acceleration factors due to residual leakage artifacts from the extra-cardiac tissue such as the chest and the back. Outer volume suppression (OVS) with leakage-blocking reconstruction has been used to enable higher acceleration rates in perfusion CMR, but suffers from higher noise amplification. In this study, we sought to augment OVS-SMS/MB imaging with a regularized leakage-blocking reconstruction algorithm to improve image quality. Results from highly-accelerated perfusion CMR show that the method improves upon SMS-SPIRiT in terms of leakage reduction and split slice (ss)-GRAPPA in terms of noise mitigation.

Background Robust Artificial-neural-networks for k-space Interpolation (RAKI) is a recently proposed deep-learning-based reconstruction algorithm for parallel imaging. Its main premise is to perform k-space interpolation using convolutional neural networks (CNNs) trained on subject-specific autocalibration signal (ACS) data. Since training is performed individually for each subject, the reconstruction time is longer than approaches that pre-train on databases. In this study, we sought to reduce the computational time of RAKI. Methods RAKI was implemented using CPU multi-processing and process pooling to maximize the utility of GPU resources. We also proposed an alternative CNN architecture that interpolates all output channels jointly for specific skipped k-space lines. This new architecture was compared to the original CNN architecture in RAKI, as well as to GRAPPA in phantom, brain and knee MRI datasets, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Results The optimized GPU implementations were approximately 2-to-5-fold faster than a simple GPU implementation. The new CNN architecture further improved the computational time by 4-to-5-fold compared to the optimized GPU implementation using the original RAKI CNN architecture. It also provided significant improvement over GRAPPA both visually and quantitatively, although it performed slightly worse than the original RAKI CNN architecture. Conclusions The proposed implementations of RAKI bring the computational time towards clinically acceptable ranges. The new CNN architecture yields faster training, albeit at a slight performance loss, which may be acceptable for faster visualization in some settings.

Myocardial T1 mapping is a quantitative MRI technique that has found great clinical utility in the detection of various heart disease. These acquisitions typically require three breath-holds, leading to long scan durations and patient discomfort. Simultaneous multi-slice (SMS) imaging has been shown to reduce the scan time of myocardial T1 mapping to a single breath-hold without sacrificing coverage, albeit at reduced precision. In this work, we propose a new reconstruction strategy for SMS imaging that combines the advantages of two different k-space interpolation strategies, while allowing for regularization, in order to improve the precision of accelerated myocardial T1 mapping.