Free-breathing fat and R2∗ quantification in the liver using a stack-of-stars multi-echo acquisition with respiratory-resolved model-based reconstruction

Schneider M, Benkert T, Solomon E, Nickel D, Fenchel M, Kiefer B, Maier A, Chandarana H, Block KT (2020)

Publication Type: Journal article

Publication year: 2020

Journal

Abstract

Purpose: To develop a free-breathing hepatic fat and (Formula presented.) quantification method by extending a previously described stack-of-stars model-based fat-water separation technique with additional modeling of the transverse relaxation rate (Formula presented.) . Methods: The proposed technique combines motion-robust radial sampling using a stack-of-stars bipolar multi-echo 3D GRE acquisition with iterative model-based fat-water separation. Parallel-Imaging and Compressed-Sensing principles are incorporated through modeling of the coil-sensitivity profiles and enforcement of total-variation (TV) sparsity on estimated water, fat, and (Formula presented.) parameter maps. Water and fat signals are used to estimate the confounder-corrected proton-density fat fraction (PDFF). Two strategies for handling respiratory motion are described: motion-averaged and motion-resolved reconstruction. Both techniques were evaluated in patients (n = 14) undergoing a hepatobiliary research protocol at 3T. PDFF and (Formula presented.) parameter maps were compared to a breath-holding Cartesian reference approach. Results: Linear regression analyses demonstrated strong (r > 0.96) and significant (P ≪.01) correlations between radial and Cartesian PDFF measurements for both the motion-averaged reconstruction (slope: 0.90; intercept: 0.07%) and the motion-resolved reconstruction (slope: 0.90; intercept: 0.11%). The motion-averaged technique overestimated hepatic (Formula presented.) values (slope: 0.35; intercept: 30.2 1/s) compared to the Cartesian reference. However, performing a respiratory-resolved reconstruction led to better (Formula presented.) value consistency (slope: 0.77; intercept: 7.5 1/s). Conclusions: The proposed techniques are promising alternatives to conventional Cartesian imaging for fat and (Formula presented.) quantification in patients with limited breath-holding capabilities. For accurate (Formula presented.) estimation, respiratory-resolved reconstruction should be used.

Authors with CRIS profile

Manuel Schneider Lehrstuhl für Informatik 14 (Bild- und Sprachverarbeitung) Andreas Maier Lehrstuhl für Informatik 5 (Mustererkennung)

Involved external institutions

New York University (NYU)

United States (USA) (US) Siemens AG, Healthcare Sector

Germany (DE)

How to cite

APA:

Schneider, M., Benkert, T., Solomon, E., Nickel, D., Fenchel, M., Kiefer, B.,... Block, K.T. (2020). Free-breathing fat and R2∗ quantification in the liver using a stack-of-stars multi-echo acquisition with respiratory-resolved model-based reconstruction. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mrm.28280

MLA:

Schneider, Manuel, et al. "Free-breathing fat and R2∗ quantification in the liver using a stack-of-stars multi-echo acquisition with respiratory-resolved model-based reconstruction." Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (2020).

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