Systems and methods for shortened look locker inversion recovery (Sh-MOLLI) cardiac gated mapping of T1
AssigneeIsis Innovation Limited
InventorsStefan K. Piechnik, Matthew D. Robson, Andreas Greiser
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A shortened version of the MOLLI sequence (Sh-MOLLI) is described which generates rapid and high-resolution myocardial spin-lattice (T1) maps. The Sh-MOLLI technique is based on a significant abbreviation of pre-existing TI sampling scheme combined with the use of processing logic to bypass the major side effects of the above sampling scheme abbreviation and distinguish between long and short T1 relaxation times in order to conditionally utilize available TI samples for non-linear T1 fitting.
Claims25
A computer implemented method for performing myocardial spin-lattice (T1) mapping, comprising:
- a) activating a pulse sequence, by at least one computing device, to perform consecutive inversion-recovery (IR) experiments that include front-loaded sampling followed by one or more subsequent samples, the consecutive inversion-recovery (IR) experiments including a first experiment acquiring the front-loaded sampling followed by a recovery epoch and the recovery epoch followed by a second experiment acquiring the one or more subsequent samples, wherein the number of samples acquired from the first experiment exceeds the number of samples acquired from the second experiment and the interval for the recovery epoch is knowingly chosen or accepted to be shorter than considered necessary for full magnetization recovery before initiating the second experiment;
- b) calculating an empirical relationship between an estimated spin-lattice relaxation time T1, a heart rate, a heart beat period, an experimentally achieved relaxation recovery time or degree, or an estimated fit error associated with the one or more subsequent samples, or two or more combinations thereof;
- and
- c) obtaining individual T1 estimates for the T1 mapping by using the calculated empirical relationship to determine whether to include the subsequent one or more samples for the T1 mapping.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.