Assessment of MRF for simultaneous T1 and T2 quantification and water–fat separation in the liver at 0.55 T

• Published in: Magma (New York, N.Y.) Vol. 36; no. 3; pp. 513 - 523
• Main Authors: Liu, Yuchi, Hamilton, Jesse, Jiang, Yun, Seiberlich, Nicole
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.07.2023
• Subjects: Basic Science - Parametric mapping and quantitative MRI; Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering; Computer Appl. in Life Sciences; Health Informatics; Imaging; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Radiology; Research Article; Solid State Physics; MRF; Water–fat separation; Multi-parametric mapping; Low field; Liver
• ISSN: 1352-8661; 1352-8661
• DOI: 10.1007/s10334-022-01057-9

Objective The goal of this work was to assess the feasibility of performing MRF in the liver on a 0.55 T scanner and to examine the feasibility of water–fat separation using rosette MRF at 0.55 T. Materials and methods Spiral and rosette MRF sequences were implemented on a commercial 0.55 T scanner. The accuracy of both sequences in T 1 and T 2 quantification was validated in the ISMRM/NIST system phantom. The efficacy of rosette MRF in water-fat separation was evaluated in simulations and water/oil phantoms. Both spiral and rosette MRF were performed in the liver of healthy subjects. Results In the ISMRM/NIST phantom, both spiral and rosette MRF achieved good agreement with reference values in T 1 and T 2 measurements. In addition, rosette MRF enables water–fat separation and can generate water- and fat- specific T 1 maps, T 2 maps, and proton density images from the same dataset for a spatial resolution of 1.56 × 1.56 × 5mm 3 within the acquisition time of 15 s. Conclusion It is feasible to measure T 1 and T 2 simultaneously in the liver using MRF on a 0.55 T system with lower performance gradients compared to state-of-the-art 1.5 T and 3 T systems within an acquisition time of 15 s. In addition, rosette MRF enables water–fat separation along with T 1 and T 2 quantification with no time penalty.