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Updated: Jul 24, 2025
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Published on: February 19, 2021
Free-breathing high isotropic resolution quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) of liver using 3D multi-echo UTE
MungSoo Kang1,2, Gerald G Behr3, Ramin Jafari1
1Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York, USA.
Purpose:
To enable free-breathing and high isotropic resolution liver quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) using 3D multi-echo UTE cones acquisition and respiratory motion-resolved image reconstruction.
Methods:
Using 3D multi-echo UTE cones MRI, a respiratory motion was estimated from the k-space center of the imaging data. After sorting the k-space data with estimated motion, respiratory motion state-resolved reconstruction was performed for multi-echo data followed by nonlinear least-squares fitting for proton density fat fraction (PDFF), , and fat-corrected B0 field maps. PDFF and B0 field maps were subsequently used for QSM reconstruction. The proposed method was compared with motion-averaged (gridding) reconstruction and conventional 3D multi-echo Cartesian MRI in moving gadolinium phantom and in vivo studies. Region of interest (ROI)-based linear regression analysis was performed on these methods to investigate correlations between gadolinium concentration and QSM in the phantom study and between and QSM in in vivo study.
Results:
Cones with motion-resolved reconstruction showed sharper image quality compared to motion-averaged reconstruction with a substantial reduction of motion artifacts in both moving phantom and in vivo studies. For ROI-based linear regression analysis of the phantom study, susceptibility values from cones with motion-resolved reconstruction ( = 0.31 0.05, = 0.999) and Cartesian without motion ( = 0.32 0.04, = 1.000) showed linear relationships with gadolinium concentrations and showed good agreement with each other. For in vivo, motion-resolved reconstruction showed higher goodness of fit ( = 0.00261 0.524, = 0.977) compared to motion-averaged reconstruction ( = 0.0021 0.572, = 0.723) in ROI-based linear regression analysis between and QSM.
Conclusion:
Feasibility of free-breathing liver QSM was demonstrated with motion-resolved 3D multi-echo UTE cones MRI, achieving high isotropic resolution currently unachievable in conventional Cartesian MRI.
