Highly efficient MRI through multi-shot echo planar imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel MRI technique called BUDA-gSlider that enables rapid, high-resolution, distortion-free whole-brain imaging by combining innovative acquisition and reconstruction strategies without phase navigators.

Contribution

The work presents a new distortion- and navigator-free msEPI method with enhanced efficiency and quality, integrating B0 modeling, multi-slice acquisition, and RF encoding for fast high-resolution MRI.

Findings

Achieves 1mm isotropic T2 mapping in about 1 minute

Provides high-fidelity diffusion imaging with improved SNR

Demonstrates robust, distortion-free whole-brain imaging

Abstract

Multi-shot echo planar imaging (msEPI) is a promising approach to achieve high in-plane resolution with high sampling efficiency and low T2* blurring. However, due to the geometric distortion, shot-to-shot phase variations and potential subject motion, msEPI continues to be a challenge in MRI. In this work, we introduce acquisition and reconstruction strategies for robust, high-quality msEPI without phase navigators. We propose Blip Up-Down Acquisition (BUDA) using interleaved blip-up and -down phase encoding, and incorporate B0 forward-modeling into Hankel structured low-rank model to enable distortion- and navigator-free msEPI. We improve the acquisition efficiency and reconstruction quality by incorporating simultaneous multi-slice acquisition and virtual-coil reconstruction into the BUDA technique. We further combine BUDA with the novel RF-encoded gSlider acquisition, dubbed BUDA-gSlider, to achieve rapid high isotropic-resolution MRI. Deploying BUDA-gSlider with model-based reconstruction allows for distortion-free whole-brain 1mm isotropic T2 mapping in about 1 minute. It also provides whole-brain 1mm isotropic diffusion imaging with high geometric fidelity and SNR efficiency. We finally incorporate sinusoidal wave gradients during the EPI readout to better use coil sensitivity encoding with controlled aliasing.