T2 Mapping from Super-Resolution-Reconstructed Clinical Fast Spin Echo Magnetic Resonance Acquisitions

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that super-resolution reconstruction from standard clinical fetal brain MRI sequences enables fast, accurate, and robust 3D T2 mapping, significantly reducing acquisition time compared to traditional methods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach combining super-resolution reconstruction with quantitative T2 mapping from routine clinical sequences for fetal brain imaging.

Findings

High repeatability and accuracy of T2 measurements

Total acquisition time under 9 minutes

Comparable results to gold-standard methods

Abstract

Relaxometry studies in preterm and at-term newborns have provided insight into brain microstructure, thus opening new avenues for studying normal brain development and supporting diagnosis in equivocal neurological situations. However, such quantitative techniques require long acquisition times and therefore cannot be straightforwardly translated to in utero brain developmental studies. In clinical fetal brain magnetic resonance imaging routine, 2D low-resolution T2-weighted fast spin echo sequences are used to minimize the effects of unpredictable fetal motion during acquisition. As super-resolution techniques make it possible to reconstruct a 3D high-resolution volume of the fetal brain from clinical low-resolution images, their combination with quantitative acquisition schemes could provide fast and accurate T2 measurements. In this context, the present work demonstrates the feasibility of using super-resolution reconstruction from conventional T2-weighted fast spin echo sequences for 3D isotropic T2 mapping. A quantitative magnetic resonance phantom was imaged using a clinical T2-weighted fast spin echo sequence at variable echo time to allow for super-resolution reconstruction at every echo time and subsequent T2 mapping of samples whose relaxometric properties are close to those of fetal brain tissue. We demonstrate that this approach is highly repeatable, accurate and robust when using six echo times (total acquisition time under 9 minutes) as compared to gold-standard single-echo spin echo sequences (several hours for one single 2D slice).