Characterizing Off-center MRI with ZTE

To maximize acquisition bandwidth in zero echo time (ZTE) sequences, readout gradients are already switched on during the RF pulse, creating unwanted slice selectivity. The resulting image distortions are amplified especially when the anatomy of interest is not located at the isocenter. We aim to characterize off-center ZTE MRI of extremities such as the shoulder, knee, and hip, adjusting the carrier frequency of the RF pulse excitation for each TR.

In ZTE MRI, radial encoding schemes are used, where the distorted slice profile due to the finite RF pulse length rotates with the k-space trajectory. To overcome these modulations for objects far away from the magnet isocenter, the frequency of the RF pulse is shifted for each gradient setting so that artifacts do not occur at a given off-center target position. The sharpness of the edges in the images were calculated and the ZTE acquisition with off-center excitation was compared to an acquisition with isocenter excitation both in phantom and in vivo off-center MRI of the shoulder, knee, and hip at 1.5 and 3T MRI systems.

Distortion and blurriness artifacts on the off-center MRI images of the phantom, in vivo shoulder, knee, and hip images were mitigated with off-center excitation without time or noise penalty, at no additional computational cost.

The off-center excitation allows ZTE MRI of the shoulder, knee, and hip for high-bandwidth image acquisitions for clinical settings, where positioning at the isocenter is not possible.