Highly Accelerated, Intravascular T1, T2, and Proton Density Mapping with Linear Algebraic Modeling and Sensitivity...

Vessel wall MRI with intravascular (IV) detectors can produce superior local signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) and generate high-resolution T₁, T₂, and proton density (PD) maps that could be used to automatically classify atherosclerotic lesion stage. However, long acquisition times potentially limit multi-parametric mapping. Here, for the first time, spectroscopy with linear algebraic modeling (SLAM) is applied to yield accurate compartment-average T₁, T₂ and PD measures at least 10 times faster compared to a standard full k-space reconstructed MIX-TSE sequence at 3T. Simple phase and magnitude sensitivity corrections are incorporated into the SLAM reconstruction to compensate for IV detector non-uniformity.