Fast 3D magnetic resonance fingerprinting for a whole-brain coverage

The purpose of this study was to accelerate the acquisition and reconstruction time of 3D magnetic resonance fingerprinting scans.

A 3D magnetic resonance fingerprinting scan was accelerated by using a single-shot spiral trajectory with an undersampling factor of 48 in the x-y plane, and an interleaved sampling pattern with an undersampling factor of 3 through plane. Further acceleration came from reducing the waiting time between neighboring partitions. The reconstruction time was accelerated by applying singular value decomposition compression in k-space. Finally, a 3D premeasured B₁ map was used to correct for the B₁ inhomogeneity.

The T₁ and T₂ values of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine/National Institute of Standards and Technology MRI phantom showed a good agreement with the standard values, with an average concordance correlation coefficient of 0.99, and coefficient of variation of 7% in the repeatability scans. The results from in vivo scans also showed high image quality in both transverse and coronal views.

This study applied a fast acquisition scheme for a fully quantitative 3D magnetic resonance fingerprinting scan with a total acceleration factor of 144 as compared with the Nyquist rate, such that 3D T₁ , T₂ , and proton density maps can be acquired with whole-brain coverage at clinical resolution in less than 5 min. Magn Reson Med 79:2190-2197, 2018. © 2017 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.