Author ORCID Identifier

Siyuan Hu

Mark A. Griswold

Dan Ma

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-17-2022

Abstract

Purpose: Although both relaxation and diffusion imaging are sensitive to tissue microstructure, studies have reported limited sensitivity and robustness of using relaxation or conventional diffusion alone to characterize tissue microstructure. Recently, it has been shown that tensor-valued diffusion encoding and joint relaxation-diffusion quantification enable more reliable quantification of compartment-specific microstructural properties. However, scan times to acquire such data can be prohibitive. Here, we aim to simultaneously quantify relaxation and diffusion using MR fingerprinting (MRF) and b-tensor encoding in a clinically feasible time.

Methods: We developed multidimensional MRF scans (mdMRF) with linear and spherical b-tensor encoding (LTE and STE) to simultaneously quantify T1, T2, and ADC maps from a single scan. The image quality, accuracy, and scan efficiency were compared between the mdMRF using LTE and STE. Moreover, we investigated the robustness of different sequence designs to signal errors and their impact on the maps.

Results: T1 and T2 maps derived from the mdMRF scans have consistently high image quality, while ADC maps are sensitive to different sequence designs. Notably, the fast imaging steady state precession (FISP)-based mdMRF scan with peripheral pulse gating provides the best ADC maps that are free of image distortion and shading artifacts.

Conclusion: We demonstrated the feasibility of quantifying T1, T2, and ADC maps simultaneously from a single mdMRF scan in around 24 s/slice. The map quality and quantitative values are consistent with the reference scans.

Keywords

b-tensor encoding, diffusion imaging, magnetic resonance fingerprinting, multidimensional MRF, quantitative MR, relaxometry

Publication Title

Magnetic Resonance in Medicine

Volume

88

Issue

5

First Page

2043

Last Page

2057

Grant

EB026764; NS109439; AQ7NS109439; 096646/Z/11/Z; 104943/Z/14/Z; 219536/Z/19/Z; 021-04844

Funder

National Institutes of Health (NIH); Wellcome Trust, Wellcome Trust; Swedish Research Council

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Included in

Radiology Commons

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