Water/fat Dixon Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

49 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Purpose: Cardiac magnetic resonance fingerprinting (cMRF) has been recently introduced to simultaneously provide T 1, T 2, and M 0 maps. Here, we develop a 3-point Dixon-cMRF approach to enable simultaneous water specific T 1, T 2, and M 0 mapping of the heart and fat fraction (FF) estimation in a single breath-hold scan. Methods: Dixon-cMRF is achieved by combining cMRF with several innovations that were previously introduced for other applications, including a 3-echo GRE acquisition with golden angle radial readout and a high-dimensional low-rank tensor constrained reconstruction to recover the highly undersampled time series images for each echo. Water–fat separation of the Dixon-cMRF time series is performed to allow for water- and fat-specific T 1, T 2, and M 0 estimation, whereas FF estimation is extracted from the M 0 maps. Dixon-cMRF was evaluated in a standardized T 1–T 2 phantom, in a water–fat phantom, and in healthy subjects in comparison to current clinical standards: MOLLI, SASHA, T 2-GRASE, and 6-point Dixon proton density FF (PDFF) mapping. Results: Dixon-cMRF water T 1 and T 2 maps showed good agreement with reference T 1 and T 2 mapping techniques (R 2 > 0.99 and maximum normalized RMSE ~5%) in a standardized phantom. Good agreement was also observed between Dixon-cMRF FF and reference PDFF (R 2 > 0.99) and between Dixon-cMRF water T 1 and T 2 and water selective T 1 and T 2 maps (R 2 > 0.99) in a water–fat phantom. In vivo Dixon-cMRF water T 1 values were in good agreement with MOLLI and water T 2 values were slightly underestimated when compared to T 2-GRASE. Average myocardium septal T 1 values were 1129 ± 38 ms, 1026 ± 28 ms, and 1045 ± 32 ms for SASHA, MOLLI, and the proposed water Dixon-cMRF. Average T 2 values were 51.7 ± 2.2 ms and 42.8 ± 2.6 ms for T 2-GRASE and water Dixon-cMRF, respectively. Dixon-cMRF FF maps showed good agreement with in vivo PDFF measurements (R 2 > 0.98) and average FF in the septum was measured at 1.3%. Conclusion: The proposed Dixon-cMRF allows to simultaneously quantify myocardial water T 1, water T 2, and FF in a single breath-hold scan, enabling multi-parametric T 1, T 2, and fat characterization. Moreover, reduced T 1 and T 2 quantification bias caused by water–fat partial volume was demonstrated in phantom experiments.

Original languageEnglish
JournalMagnetic Resonance in Medicine
DOIs
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 17 Oct 2019

Keywords

  • cardiac MRI
  • fat fraction
  • MR fingerprinting
  • T1 mapping
  • water–fat DIXON
  • T2 mapping

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Water/fat Dixon Cardiac Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this