MRI in New Dimensions: Motion-Resolved Quantitative Imaging by Multitasking”

Abstract: "Quantitative MRI provides many benefits over traditional qualitative imaging: reproducible tissue characterization, diagnosis of diffuse disease, the potential for earlier disease detection, and more. The standard approach to quantitative MRI of moving organs (e.g., the heart or abdominal organs) has been to “freeze” motion using a complicated mixture of EC triggering and repeated breath holds. That approach is difficult, unreliable, and most importantly, unsuitable for patients with irregular heartbeats or trouble breath-holding, preventing the wide clinical adoption of quantitative MR in many areas. This seminar describes a new class of approaches to quantitative imaging, which redesign the MR imaging process around the concept of multiple time dimensions. Rather than trying to avoid motion, these approaches “multitask”, capturing motion alongside multiple simultaneous tissue processes for quantification—each of which is assigned its own time dimension. This allows fast, accurate, and repeatable motion-resolved quantitative imaging, and enables non-ECG, free-breathing quantification of multiple tissue parameters at once, even in the heart."