Minimization of eddy current artifacts in sequences with periodic dynamics

Area of Science:

• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
• Medical Physics
• Image Reconstruction

Background:

• Eddy currents are a significant source of artifacts in quantitative MRI.
• These artifacts arise from large k-space jumps in balanced gradient moment sequences.
• Minimizing these artifacts is crucial for accurate quantitative MRI.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and evaluate a method for minimizing eddy current artifacts.
• Focus on periodic pulse sequences with balanced gradient moments.
• Improve the quality of quantitative MRI data.

Main Methods:

• A novel k-space reordering scheme is proposed.
• Individual k-space lines are swapped between repetitions to minimize temporal jumps.
• The optimization problem is solved using a simulated annealing algorithm.
• The approach leverages the periodicity of sampled spin dynamics.

Main Results:

• Substantial reduction in eddy current artifacts observed in reconstructed images.
• Quantitative parameter maps show significant artifact reduction compared to default ordering.
• An algorithm variant minimizing all k-space jumps equally showed slightly lower artifact levels.

Conclusions:

• The proposed k-space reordering effectively reduces eddy current artifacts.
• This method enhances the accuracy of quantitative MRI.
• It offers an efficient way to acquire data while minimizing artifacts, building upon previous approaches.