High sensitivity MR acoustic radiation force imaging using transition band balanced steady-state free precession

MR acoustic radiation force imaging (MR-ARFI) provides a method to visualize the focal spot of a focused ultrasound (FUS) beam without introducing a significant temperature rise. With conventional spoiled MR-ARFI pulse sequences, the ARFI phase always equals the motion-encoded phase. In this work, MR-ARFI using transition band balanced steady-state free precession (bSSFP) is presented, which improves the sensitivity of MR-ARFI with high acquisition speed.

Motion-encoding gradients (MEG) are inserted into bSSFP sequences for MR-ARFI. By applying an ultrasound pulse during the MEG, motion-encoded phase is generated, which leads to an amplified change in the image phase when operating in the bSSFP transition band. MR-ARFI was performed on a homemade gel phantom using both the proposed technique and a spoiled gradient echo ARFI sequence with identical MEG and FUS, and ARFI images were compared.

The bSSFP-ARFI sequence generated an ARFI image phase that is more than 5 times larger than the motion-encoded phase in a few seconds with 2DFT readout. By keeping FUS pulses as short as 1.45 ms, temperature rise was insignificant during the measurement.

bSSFP-ARFI has enhanced sensitivity compared with conventional MR-ARFI pulse sequences and could provide an efficient way to visualize the focal spot. Magn Reson Med 79:1532-1537, 2018. © 2017 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.