Single-scan MRI with exceptional resilience to field heterogeneities

Area of Science:

• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
• Biomedical Engineering
• Medical Physics

Background:

• Conventional single-scan 2D MRI is typically limited to high-quality magnetic field conditions.
• Existing methods often require field maps or are sensitive to magnetic field inhomogeneities.

Purpose of the Study:

• Introduce a new methodology, cross-term spatiotemporal encoding (xSPEN), for single-scan 2D MRI.
• Enable high-quality MRI acquisitions under suboptimal external magnetic field conditions.

Main Methods:

• xSPEN utilizes spatiotemporal encoding of the image, departing from conventional k-space scanning.
• Image readout employs an ancillary source of frequency broadening (orthogonal field gradient) instead of a gradient along the probed direction.
• The method is compatible with existing MRI scanners and does not require auxiliary information like field maps.

Main Results:

• Single- and multi-slice MRI experiments were conducted in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo.
• The xSPEN method demonstrated unusual resilience to multiple chemical sites across phantoms, animals, and humans.
• High-quality single-scan MRI was achieved despite challenging magnetic field conditions.

Conclusions:

• xSPEN provides single-scan MRI with good sensitivity and exceptional resilience to field inhomogeneities.
• This technique expands the scope of investigations possible with MRI.
• The findings suggest potential for broader MRI applications in diverse environments.