3D Simultaneous Post-contrast T1/T2 Mapping and Synthetic Multi-Contrast Late Gadolinium Enhancement at 0.55T

OBJECTIVES: To propose and validate a simplified method for 3D simultaneous post-contrast parametric mapping and synthetic late gadolinium enhancement (LGE) imaging at 0.55T for comprehensive whole-heart myocardial tissue characterization. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A 3D joint T1/T2 mapping research sequence is adopted from a previous study. Three interleaved volumes with inversion recovery (IR) preparation, no magnetization preparation, and T2 preparation were acquired with image navigators to enable 100% respiratory scan efficiency. Intrinsically co-registered 3D T1, T2, and proton density maps were calculated using a dictionary-matching method, and Bloch equation-based IR and T2 preparation-IR (T2IR) signal models were proposed to generate multi-contrast 3D synthetic LGE images. In vivo evaluation included 10 data sets from a porcine myocardial infarction model to validate the performance of the proposed 3D method in comparison with that of separately scanned 2D reference sequences including post-contrast T1 mapping, pre-contrast T2 mapping, and LGE. RESULTS: For the 10 swine data sets, 2D and 3D T1/T2 maps had consistent findings regarding the changes in T1/T2 values of myocardial infarction, presenting significantly decreased post-contrast T1 (2D: 279±48 vs. 472±44 ms, P