Highly efficient 3D motion-compensated abdomen MRI from undersampled golden-RPE acquisitions

Area of Science:

• Medical Imaging
• Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• Radiology

Background:

• Navigator gating is a common method for respiratory motion compensation in 3D MRI.
• This technique suffers from poor scan efficiency and prolonged scan times.
• Free-breathing 3D MRI of the abdomen requires effective motion compensation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a motion-compensated 3D MRI technique for the abdomen.
• To achieve nearly 100% scan efficiency without increasing scan time.
• To reduce scan time compared to conventional gating methods.

Main Methods:

• A self-gated golden-radial phase encoding sampling scheme was utilized.
• Multiple undersampled 3D images were reconstructed at different respiratory positions.
• Non-rigid image registrations and motion field interpolations formed 3D motion models for a high-quality image.

Main Results:

• The technique enabled reconstruction of 3D liver MRI with 1.75 mm isotropic resolution.
• Acquisition time was reduced to 1.1 minutes.
• Image quality was comparable to self-gating approaches in 10 healthy volunteers.

Conclusions:

• The proposed method significantly reduces scan time by 56% compared to gating.
• Similar image quality is preserved, offering an efficient alternative for abdominal MRI.
• This technique enhances the feasibility of free-breathing 3D MRI.