Feasibility of joint mapping of triglyceride saturation and water longitudinal relaxation in a single breath hold applied to high fat-fraction adipose depots in the periclavicular anatomy

Abstract

Introduction: Simultaneous mapping of triglyceride (TAG) saturation and tissue water relaxation may improve the characterization of the structure and function of anatomies with significant adipose tissue. While several groups have demonstrated in vivo TAG saturation imaging using MRI, joint mapping of relaxation and TAG saturation is understudied. Such mappings may avoid bias from physiological motion, if they can be done within a single breath-hold, and also account for static and applied magnetic field heterogeneity.

Methods: We propose a transient-state/MR fingerprinting single breath-hold sequence at 3 T, a low-rank reconstruction, and a parameter estimation pipeline that jointly estimates the number of double bonds (NDB), number of methylene interrupted double bonds (NMIDB), and tissue water T₁, while accounting for non-ideal radiofrequency transmit scaling and off-resonance effects. We test the proposed method in simulations, in phantom against MR spectroscopy (MRS), and in vivo regions in and around high fat fraction (FF) periclavicular adipose tissue. Partial volume and multi-peak transverse relaxation effects are explored.

Results: The simulation results demonstrate accurate NDB, NMIDB, and water T₁ estimates across a range of NDB, NMIDB, and T₁ values. In phantoms, the proposed method's estimates of NDB and NMIDB correlate with those from MR spectroscopy (Pearson correlation ≥0.98), while the water T₁ estimates are concordant with a standard phantom. The NDB and NMIDB are sensitive to partial volumes of water, showing increasing bias at FF < 40%. This bias is found to be due to noise and transverse relaxation effects. The in vivo periclavicular adipose tissue has high FF (>90%). The adipose tissue NDB and NMIDB, and muscle T₁ estimates are comparable to those reported in the literature.

Conclusion: Robust estimation of NDB, NMIDB at high FF and water T₁ across a broad range of FFs are feasible using the proposed methods. Further reduction of noise and model bias are needed to employ the proposed technique in low FF anatomies and pathologies.

Keywords: Adipose tissue; Longitudinal relaxation; Low-rank reconstruction; Magnetic resonance fingerprinting; Triglyceride saturation.