Efficient T2 mapping with blip-up/down EPI and gSlider-SMS (T2 -BUDA-gSlider)

Xiaozhi Cao; Kang Wang; Congyu Liao; Zijing Zhang; Siddharth Srinivasan Iyer; Zhifeng Chen; Wei-Ching Lo; Huafeng Liu; Hongjian He; Kawin Setsompop; Jianhui Zhong; Berkin Bilgic

doi:10.1002/mrm.28872

Efficient T₂ mapping with blip-up/down EPI and gSlider-SMS (T₂ -BUDA-gSlider)

Magn Reson Med. 2021 Oct;86(4):2064-2075. doi: 10.1002/mrm.28872. Epub 2021 May 28.

Authors

Xiaozhi Cao^{1

2

3}, Kang Wang⁴, Congyu Liao^{2

3}, Zijing Zhang^{2

5}, Siddharth Srinivasan Iyer^{2

6}, Zhifeng Chen^{2

3

7}, Wei-Ching Lo⁸, Huafeng Liu⁵, Hongjian He¹, Kawin Setsompop^{2

3

9}, Jianhui Zhong^{1

10}, Berkin Bilgic^{2

3

9}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Brain Imaging Science and Technology, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
² Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA.
³ Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA.
⁴ Department of Neurology, the First Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, College of Optical Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China.
⁶ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
⁷ School of Biomedical Engineering, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Medical Image Processing, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
⁸ Siemens Medical Solutions, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
⁹ Harvard-MIT Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
¹⁰ Department of Imaging Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA.

Abstract

Purpose: To rapidly obtain high isotropic-resolution T₂ maps with whole-brain coverage and high geometric fidelity.

Methods: A T₂ blip-up/down EPI acquisition with generalized slice-dithered enhanced resolution (T₂ -BUDA-gSlider) is proposed. A RF-encoded multi-slab spin-echo (SE) EPI acquisition with multiple TEs was developed to obtain high SNR efficiency with reduced TR. This was combined with an interleaved 2-shot EPI acquisition using blip-up/down phase encoding. An estimated field map was incorporated into the joint multi-shot EPI reconstruction with a structured low rank constraint to achieve distortion-free and robust reconstruction for each slab without navigation. A Bloch simulated subspace model was integrated into gSlider reconstruction and used for T₂ quantification.

Results: In vivo results demonstrated that the T₂ values estimated by the proposed method were consistent with gold standard spin-echo acquisition. Compared to the reference 3D fast spin echo (FSE) images, distortion caused by off-resonance and eddy current effects were effectively mitigated.

Conclusion: BUDA-gSlider SE-EPI acquisition and gSlider-subspace joint reconstruction enabled distortion-free whole-brain T₂ mapping in 2 min at ~1 mm³ isotropic resolution, which could bring significant benefits to related clinical and neuroscience applications.

Keywords: BUDA; T2 map; gSlider; structured low rank.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Brain / diagnostic imaging
Brain Mapping
Echo-Planar Imaging*
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted*
Imaging, Three-Dimensional

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding