Faculty Bibliography

PURPOSE: Through-plane susceptibility-induced signal loss in gradient recalled echo (GRE)-based sequences can considerably impair both the clinical diagnosis and functional analysis of certain brain areas. In this work, a fully automated simultaneous z-shim approach is proposed on the basis of parallel transmit (pTX) to reduce those signal dropouts at 3T. THEORY AND METHODS: The approach uses coil-specific time-delayed excitations to impose a z-shim phase. It was extended toward B1 inhomogeneity mitigation and adequate slice-specific signal-dephasing cancellation on the basis of the prevailing B0 and B1 spatial information. Local signal recovery level and image quality preservation were analyzed using multi-slice FLASH experiments in humans and compared to the standard excitation. Spatial blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) activation coverage was further compared in breath-hold functional MRI. RESULTS: The pTX z-shim approach recovered approximately 47% of brain areas affected by signal loss in standard excitation images across all subjects. At the same time, B1 shading effects could be substantially reduced. In these areas, BOLD activation coverage could be also increased by approximately 57%. CONCLUSION: The proposed fully automated pTX z-shim method enables time-efficient and robust signal recovery in GRE-based sequences on a clinical scanner using two standard whole-body transmit coils. Magn Reson Med 74:934-944, 2015. (c) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The pituitary gland is located outside of the blood-brain barrier. Dynamic T1 weighted contrast enhanced sequence is considered to be the gold standard to evaluate this region. However, it does not allow assessment of intrinsic permeability properties of the gland. Our aim was to demonstrate the utility of radial volumetric interpolated brain examination with the golden-angle radial sparse parallel technique to evaluate permeability characteristics of the individual components (anterior and posterior gland and the median eminence) of the pituitary gland and areas of differential enhancement and to optimize the study acquisition time. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A retrospective study was performed in 52 patients (group 1, 25 patients with normal pituitary glands; and group 2, 27 patients with a known diagnosis of microadenoma). Radial volumetric interpolated brain examination sequences with golden-angle radial sparse parallel technique were evaluated with an ROI-based method to obtain signal-time curves and permeability measures of individual normal structures within the pituitary gland and areas of differential enhancement. Statistical analyses were performed to assess differences in the permeability parameters of these individual regions and optimize the study acquisition time. RESULTS: Signal-time curves from the posterior pituitary gland and median eminence demonstrated a faster wash-in and time of maximum enhancement with a lower peak of enhancement compared with the anterior pituitary gland (P < .005). Time-optimization analysis demonstrated that 120 seconds is ideal for dynamic pituitary gland evaluation. In the absence of a clinical history, differences in the signal-time curves allow easy distinction between a simple cyst and a microadenoma. CONCLUSIONS: This retrospective study confirms the ability of the golden-angle radial sparse parallel technique to evaluate the permeability characteristics of the pituitary gland and establishes 120 seconds as the ideal acquisition time for dynamic pituitary gland imaging.

In routine whole-body PET/MR hybrid imaging, attenuation correction (AC) is usually performed by segmentation methods based on a Dixon MR sequence providing up to 4 different tissue classes. Because of the lack of bone information with the Dixon-based MR sequence, bone is currently considered as soft tissue. Thus, the aim of this study was to evaluate a novel model-based AC method that considers bone in whole-body PET/MR imaging. METHODS: The new method ("Model") is based on a regular 4-compartment segmentation from a Dixon sequence ("Dixon"). Bone information is added using a model-based bone segmentation algorithm, which includes a set of prealigned MR image and bone mask pairs for each major body bone individually. Model was quantitatively evaluated on 20 patients who underwent whole-body PET/MR imaging. As a standard of reference, CT-based mu-maps were generated for each patient individually by nonrigid registration to the MR images based on PET/CT data. This step allowed for a quantitative comparison of all mu-maps based on a single PET emission raw dataset of the PET/MR system. Volumes of interest were drawn on normal tissue, soft-tissue lesions, and bone lesions; standardized uptake values were quantitatively compared. RESULTS: In soft-tissue regions with background uptake, the average bias of SUVs in background volumes of interest was 2.4% +/- 2.5% and 2.7% +/- 2.7% for Dixon and Model, respectively, compared with CT-based AC. For bony tissue, the -25.5% +/- 7.9% underestimation observed with Dixon was reduced to -4.9% +/- 6.7% with Model. In bone lesions, the average underestimation was -7.4% +/- 5.3% and -2.9% +/- 5.8% for Dixon and Model, respectively. For soft-tissue lesions, the biases were 5.1% +/- 5.1% for Dixon and 5.2% +/- 5.2% for Model. CONCLUSION: The novel MR-based AC method for whole-body PET/MR imaging, combining Dixon-based soft-tissue segmentation and model-based bone estimation, improves PET quantification in whole-body hybrid PET/MR imaging, especially in bony tissue and nearby soft tissue.

PURPOSE: This work intends to demonstrate a new method for quantifying concentration of sodium (23 Na) of bi-exponential T2 relaxation in patients on MRI scanners at 3.0 Tesla. THEORY AND METHODS: Two single-quantum (SQ) sodium images acquired at very-short and short echo times (TE = 0.5 and 5.0 ms) are subtracted to produce an image of the short-T2 component of the bi-exponential (or bound) sodium. An integrated calibration on the SQ and short-T2 images quantifies both total and bound sodium concentrations. Numerical models were used to evaluate signal response of the proposed method to the short-T2 components. MRI scans on agar phantoms and brain tumor patients were performed to assess accuracy and performance of the proposed method, in comparison with a conventional method of triple-quantum filtering. RESULTS: A good linear relation (R2 = 0.98) was attained between the short-T2 image intensity and concentration of bound sodium. A reduced total scan time of 22 min was achieved under the SAR restriction for human studies in quantifying both total and bound sodium concentrations. CONCLUSION: The proposed method is feasible for quantifying bound sodium concentration in routine clinical settings at 3.0 Tesla. Magn Reson Med, 2014. (c) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

PURPOSE: Quantitative susceptibility map (QSM) reconstruction is ill posed due to the zero values on the "magic angle cone" that make the maps prone to streaking artifacts. We propose projection onto convex sets (POCS) in the method of steepest descent (SD) for QSM reconstruction. METHODS: Two convex projections, an object-support projection in the image domain and a projection in k-space were used. QSM reconstruction using the proposed SD-POCS method was compared with SD and POCS alone as well as with truncated k-space division (TKD) for numerically simulated and 7 Tesla (T) human brain phase data. RESULTS: The QSM reconstruction error from noise-free simulated phase data using SD-POCS is at least two orders of magnitude lower than using SD, POCS, or TKD and has reduced streaking artifacts. Using the l1 -TV reconstructed susceptibility as a gold standard for 7T in vivo imaging, SD-POCS showed better image quality comparing to SD, POCS, or TKD from visual inspection. CONCLUSION: POCS is an alternative method for regularization that can be used in an iterative minimization method such as SD for QSM reconstruction. Magn Reson Med 73:697-703, 2015. (c) 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

INTRODUCTION: Essential tremor can be treated by thalamic stimulation or ablation of the ventral intermediate nucleus (VIM) with good outcomes [1]. Routine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) cannot distinguish between thalamic nuclei so targeting is based on anatomic atlas-based coordinates. Diffusion MRI-based track density imaging (TDI) can better depict internal thalamic structure [2], but previously has required high-field MRI or long acquisitions that are not clinically practical. We applied multiband diffusion MRI [3] to enable 3-Tesla (3-T) MRI TDI in patients with essential tremor. METHODS: Six patients with essential tremor underwent standard preoperative MRI with an additional multiband diffusion sequence that used 3-slice acceleration factor, 3-mm isotropic image resolution, whole-brain coverage (45 slices) and 256 diffusion gradient directions (b = 2500 s/mm) acquired in 11 minutes. TDI data post-processing generated track density and direction-encoded color maps at 500-micron isotropic super-resolution [2]. RESULTS: Combining TDI and multiband diffusion acquisitions resulted in high-quality images of the human thalamus in typical elderly essential tremor patients using 3-T MRI and clinically feasible scan times. Results also were consistent for repeat imaging in the 3 volunteers. TDI with or without direction-encoding demonstrated some of the internal anatomy of the thalamus, but fiber-orientation maps derived from these data (Fig. 1) were preferred by the 2 participating functional neurosurgeons. CONCLUSION: Multiband diffusion acquisition makes TDI-based parcellation of the thalamus feasible in elderly patients with essential tremor using 3-T MRI. This approach provides at least equivalent data to previous diffusion tractography or TDI approaches for thalamus parcellation, but without long scan times or a 7-Tesla MRI system [4-6]. While planning for gamma knife ablation of VIM for these initial 6 patients still relied on conventional methods, future efforts will focus on validation and careful introduction of TDI-derived thalamic maps to actual surgical planning.