Free-breathing motion compensated 4D (3D+respiration) T2-weighted turbo spin-echo MRI for body imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel free-breathing 4D T2-weighted MRI sequence with motion compensation using rCASPR sampling, improving image quality and enabling clinical application without breath-holding.

Contribution

It develops a motion compensated 4D MRI technique with rCASPR sampling, enhancing image quality and contrast preservation during free-breathing scans.

Findings

rCASPR provides superior point-spread-function compared to linear sampling.

The proposed method maintains image contrast similar to conventional sequences.

Gradient entropy analysis shows improved image stability with motion compensation.

Abstract

Purpose: To develop and evaluate a free-breathing respiratory motion compensated 4D (3D+respiration) $T_2$-weighted turbo spin echo sequence with application to radiology and MR-guided radiotherapy. Methods: k-space data are continuously acquired using a rewound Cartesian acquisition with spiral profile ordering (rCASPR) to provide matching contrast to the conventional linear phase encode ordering and to sort data into multiple respiratory phases. Low-resolution respiratory-correlated 4D images were reconstructed with compressed sensing and used to estimate non-rigid deformation vector fields, which were subsequently used for a motion compensated image reconstruction. rCASPR sampling was compared to linear and CASPR sampling in terms of point-spread-function (PSF) and image contrast with in silico, phantom and in vivo experiments. Reconstruction parameters for low-resolution 4D-MRI (spatial resolution and temporal regularization) were determined using a grid search. The proposed motion compensated rCASPR was evaluated in eight healthy volunteers and compared to free-breathing scans with linear sampling. Image quality was compared based on visual inspection and quantitatively by means of the gradient entropy. Results: rCASPR provided a superior PSF (similar in ky and narrower in kz) and showed no considerable differences in images contrast compared to linear sampling. The optimal 4D-MRI reconstruction parameters were spatial resolution=$4.5 mm^3$ and $\lambda_t=10^{-4}$. The groupwise average gradient entropy was 22.31 for linear, 22.20 for rCASPR, 22.14 for soft-gated rCASPR and 22.02 for motion compensated rCASPR. Conclusion: The proposed motion compensated rCASPR enables high quality free-breathing T2-TSE with minimal changes in image contrast and scan time. The proposed method therefore enables direct transfer of clinically used 3D TSE sequences to free-breathing.