High-resolution spiral imaging on a whole-body 7T scanner with minimized image blurring

High-resolution (approximately 0.22 mm) images are preferably acquired on whole-body 7T scanners to visualize minianatomic structures in human brain. They usually need long acquisition time ( approximately 12 min) in three-dimensional scans, even with both parallel imaging and partial Fourier samplings. The combined use of both fast imaging techniques, however, leads to occasionally visible undersampling artifacts. Spiral imaging has an advantage in acquisition efficiency over rectangular sampling, but its implementations are limited due to image blurring caused by a strong off-resonance effect at 7T. This study proposes a solution for minimizing image blurring while keeping spiral efficient. Image blurring at 7T was, first, quantitatively investigated using computer simulations and point-spread functions. A combined use of multishot spirals and ultrashort echo time acquisitions was then employed to minimize off-resonance-induced image blurring. Experiments on phantoms and healthy subjects were performed on a whole-body 7T scanner to show the performance of the proposed method. The three-dimensional brain images of human subjects were obtained at echo time = 1.18 ms, resolution = 0.22 mm (field of view = 220 mm, matrix size = 1024), and in-plane spiral shots = 128, using a home-developed ultrashort echo time sequence (acquisition-weighted stack of spirals). The total acquisition time for 60 partitions at pulse repetition time = 100 ms was 12.8 min without use of parallel imaging and partial Fourier sampling. The blurring in these spiral images was minimized to a level comparable to that in gradient-echo images with rectangular acquisitions, while the spiral acquisition efficiency was maintained at eight. These images showed that spiral imaging at 7T was feasible.