3D joint T 1 /T 1 ρ /T 2 mapping and water‐fat imaging for contrast‐agent free myocardial tissue characterization at 1.5T

• Published in: Magnetic resonance in medicine Vol. 93; no. 6; pp. 2297 - 2310
• Main Authors: Crabb, Michael G., Kunze, Karl P., Littlewood, Simon J., Tripp, Donovan, Fotaki, Anastasia, Prieto, Claudia, Botnar, René M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01.06.2025
• Subjects: Adipose Tissue - diagnostic imaging; Adult; Algorithms; Contrast Media; Female; Heart - diagnostic imaging; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods; Imaging, Three-Dimensional - methods; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Male; Myocardium - pathology; Phantoms, Imaging; Water - chemistry; mapping; myocardial tissue characterisation; cardiac MRI; 3D multi‐parametric MRI
• ISSN: 0740-3194; 1522-2594
• DOI: 10.1002/mrm.30397

To develop a novel, free-breathing, 3D joint / / mapping sequence with Dixon encoding to provide co-registered 3D , , and maps and water-fat volumes with isotropic spatial resolution in a single min scan for comprehensive contrast-agent-free myocardial tissue characterization and simultaneous evaluation of the whole-heart anatomy. An interleaving sequence over 5 heartbeats is proposed to provide , , and encoding, with 3D data acquired with Dixon gradient-echo readout and 2D image navigators to enable respiratory scan efficiency. Images were reconstructed with a non-rigid motion-corrected, low-rank patch-based reconstruction, and maps were generated through dictionary matching. The proposed sequence was compared against conventional 2D techniques in phantoms, 10 healthy subjects, and 1 patient. The proposed 3D , , and measurements showed excellent correlation with 2D reference measurements in phantoms. For healthy subjects, the mapping values of septal myocardial tissue were , , and for the proposed sequence, against , , and for 2D MOLLI, 2D -prep bSSFP and 2D -prep bSSFP, respectively. Promising results were obtained when comparing the proposed mapping to 2D references in 1 patient with active myocarditis. The proposed approach enables simultaneous 3D whole-heart joint / / mapping and water/fat imaging in 7 min scan time, demonstrating good agreement with conventional mapping techniques in phantoms and healthy subjects and promising results in 1 patient with suspected cardiovascular disease.