Accelerated quantitative MRI
Quantitative MRI is a technique that uses magnetic resonance imaging to measure various tissue parameters, such as the longitudinal and transverse relaxation time constants, T1 and T2, the free water content, and the magnetic susceptibility of tissue. In contrast to conventional qualitative MRI, qMRI offers unique advantages, such as higher sensitivity and comparability, but suffers from prolonged acquisition times that hinder its widespread clinical application.
INM-4 researchers are working to develop novel acceleration techniques to reduce the measurement time by using a combination of novel data acquisition and image reconstruction strategies, enabling the recovery of high-quality images from even highly undersampled, i.e., accelerated, datasets. In particular, the use of non-Cartesian sampling, e.g., radial or spiral trajectories, provides a more efficient traversal of k-space, whereas advanced reconstruction techniques, such as compressed sensing and model-based reconstruction, use prior knowledge about MR physics and the imaging subject.
M. Zimmermann, Z. Abbas, K. Dzieciol and N. J. Shah, “Accelerated Parameter Mapping of Multiple-Echo Gradient-Echo Data Using Model-Based Iterative Reconstruction,” in IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 626-637, Feb. 2018, doi: 10.1109/TMI.2017.2771504.
