Accelerated spectroscopic imaging of hyperpolarized C-13 pyruvate using SENSE parallel imaging

Area of Science:

• Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• Hyperpolarized Contrast Agents
• Spectroscopy

Background:

• Chemical shift imaging (CSI) is crucial for metabolic studies using hyperpolarized compounds.
• Traditional CSI scans can be time-consuming, limiting in vivo applications.
• Accelerating CSI acquisition is essential for improving temporal resolution and patient comfort.

Purpose of the Study:

• To demonstrate the feasibility of accelerating hyperpolarized CSI scans using parallel imaging.
• To present a custom hardware setup for simultaneous multi-channel data acquisition.
• To evaluate the performance of parallel imaging in accelerating hyperpolarized compound scans.

Main Methods:

• Developed a hardware system with four receivers for simultaneous (13)C signal detection.
• Integrated the system with commercial MRI scanner electronics for multi-channel operation.
• Reconstructed accelerated CSI data using a self-calibrated multi-spectral parallel imaging algorithm.

Main Results:

• Successfully demonstrated in vivo parallel imaging for accelerated hyperpolarized CSI.
• Acquired (13)C CSI data simultaneously from multiple channels.
• Utilized lower resolution coil sensitivity maps for accelerated scan reconstruction.

Conclusions:

• Parallel imaging effectively accelerates spatial encoding in hyperpolarized CSI.
• The developed multi-channel hardware facilitates faster in vivo metabolic imaging.
• This approach offers significant advantages for imaging hyperpolarized compounds, despite potential challenges.