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Author Spotlight: Standardization and Best Practices for Advancing Lung Imaging Using 129Xe MRI
Published on: November 21, 2023
Rapid acquisition of helium-3 and proton three-dimensional image sets of the human lung in a single breath-hold using
Kun Qing1, Talissa A Altes1, Nicholas J Tustison1
1Center for In-vivo Hyperpolarized Gas MR Imaging, Department of Radiology and Medical Imaging, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia, USA.
Purpose:
To develop and validate a method for acquiring helium-3 ((3) He) and proton ((1) H) three-dimensional (3D) image sets of the human lung with isotropic spatial resolution within a 10-s breath-hold by using compressed sensing (CS) acceleration, and to assess the fidelity of undersampled images compared with fully sampled images.
Methods:
The undersampling scheme for CS acceleration was optimized and tested using (3) He ventilation data. Rapid 3D acquisition of both (3) He and (1) H data during one breath-hold was then implemented, based on a balanced steady-state free-precession pulse sequence, by random undersampling of k-space with reconstruction by means of minimizing the L1 norm and total variance. CS-reconstruction fidelity was evaluated quantitatively by comparing fully sampled and retrospectively undersampled image sets.
Results:
Helium-3 and (1) H 3D image sets of the lung with isotropic 3.9-mm resolution were acquired during a single breath-hold in 12 s and 8 s using acceleration factors of 2 and 3, respectively. Comparison of fully sampled and retrospectively undersampled (3) He and (1) H images yielded mean absolute errors <10% and structural similarity indices >0.9.
Conclusion:
By randomly undersampling k-space and using CS reconstruction, high-quality (3) He and (1) H 3D image sets with isotropic 3.9-mm resolution can be acquired within an 8-s breath-hold.
