New approach for improved radiological diagnosis of pathology by means of fast and robust parameter quantification in 3D Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

自20世纪80年代初人类首次获得磁共振(MR)图像以来，MRI因其非侵入性、丰富的信息量以及广泛的对比度而在医学诊断中发挥着越来越大的作用。在目前的临床实践中，为了生成具有不同对比度的多个图像，顺序地执行几个单独的MRI采集。然而，这个过程很耗时，容易出现连续的未对准和配准伪影，并且它通常提供各向异性的空间分辨率。此外，这些图像的对比度往往不太理想，而且与计算机断层扫描(CT)不同，通常不包含定量信息。我们的目标是从根本上改变临床核磁共振检查的进行方式。这种方法将允许我们在使用具有各向同性空间分辨率的超高速3D MRI序列的单个成像实验中获得关于自旋密度和弛豫时间(T1和T2)的定量信息。从这些体素量化的3D体积数据集，可以在实际图像采集之后生成几乎任何对比度和所需角度方向的合成图像。这有可能极大地改善MRI对各种病理的检测，并有望实现快速转换为标准化的临床检查方案。在各种场强为1.5T和3T的MR系统上实施和验证后，我们将把这项新技术应用于诊断为多发性硬化(MS)和Fabrys病(FD)的患者，以展示在中枢神经系统(CNS)病变检测和分类方面的预期改进。为了使该方法对运动具有健壮性，从而适用于不合作和儿科的患者，我们将通过运动检测和矫正方案来扩展该方法。这也将允许将该方法转换为例如腹部应用，例如肝脏，其中呼吸运动使定量成像变得困难。这种量化的一站式方法有可能提高患者的舒适度、扫描和成本效率以及各种标准临床应用的诊断精确度。

Since the acquisition of the first human magnetic resonance (MR) images in the early 1980s, MRI has played an ever-increasing diagnostic role in medicine due to its non-invasive nature, its rich information content and, in particular, the wide array of available contrasts. In current clinical practice, several individual MRI acquisitions are performed sequentially in order to generate multiple images with varying contrast. However, this procedure is time consuming, prone to successive misalignments and registration artifacts and it usually delivers an anisotropic spatial resolution. In addition, these images often have suboptimal contrast and, unlike in computed tomography (CT), do not typically contain quantitative information. Our goal is to fundamentally change the way clinical MRI exams are carried out. This approach will allow us to obtain quantitative information on spin density and relaxation times (T1 & T2) in a single imaging experiment using an ultra-fast 3D MRI sequence with isotropic spatial resolution. From these voxel-wise quantitative 3D volume data sets, synthetic images of virtually any contrast and at any angular orientation desired can be generated after the actual image acquisition. This has the potential to profoundly improve the detection of various pathologies by MRI and can be expected enable a rapid translation into standardized clinical examination protocols. After implementation and validation on various MR systems with field strengths of 1.5T and 3T, we will apply the new technique to patients diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Fabrys disease (FD) in order to demonstrate the expected improvements in lesion detection and classification in the central nervous system (CNS). In order to make the methodology robust against motion and thus available for uncooperative and pediatric patients we will extend the methodology by a motion detection and correction scheme. This will also allow the translation of the methodology to e.g. abdominal applications, such as the liver where respiratory motion makes quantitative imaging difficult. The quantitative -- one-stop-shop -- approach has the potential to increase patient comfort, scan and cost efficiency as well as diagnostic fidelity for various standard clinical applications.