Highly Accelerated Simultaneous Multi-Slice Phase Contrast MRI

 描述（由申请人提供）：MRI相位对比速度成像广泛应用于几乎所有MRI扫描仪，用于脑部疾病、心脏和心血管疾病的临床诊断以及神经科学研究。目前，血流和CSF运动的相位对比成像需要更长的扫描时间，每个2D切片或3D空间图像需要额外的速度编码维度，需要更长的采集时间。考虑到心率、心搏输出量和呼吸运动对血液和CSF速度的影响的生理变化，不仅需要大大减少患者在扫描仪中的时间，还需要减少相位对比成像的扫描时间。为了实现几倍更快的成像，我们建议开发新的技术，以获得速度相位图像同时，而不是分开。我们的新技术称为同步多切片成像（SMS）相衬（PC）成像的创新，以获得2 - 10个相衬图像同时记录，导致几乎这个因素的倒数减少扫描时间。新的同步相位对比成像技术的可用性将使临床医生和研究人员能够在2010年进行显着改进的MRI灌注测量，这些改进将影响许多不同疾病的诊断，包括中风，心脏，心血管疾病。此外，血流和CSF流量是重要的定量生物标志物，可用作评价疾病的新药疗法的生理成像。这一系列新的相衬成像技术利用更有效的脉冲序列，在分辨率、切片覆盖范围、SNR和速度方面具有重大优势。新的同步成像将具有很高的实用性，非常适合在全球范围内的临床扫描仪上使用。改进的定量MRI血流成像提供了整体提高的速度，这是高度商业化的，因为它们提供了改进的诊断方法来评估疾病，并进一步提高MRI检查的特异性和灵敏度。这项新技术将在加州大学伯克利分校、加州大学旧金山弗朗西斯科（UCSF）医学中心、哈佛医学院和雪松西奈医学中心的MRI扫描仪上设计、实施和评估。一旦成像协议得到优化，它们将在欧洲的合作临床试验场所进一步评估和优化，包括伦敦的主要心血管医院、皇家布朗普顿医院和其他地方。除了在医学检查中确立其价值外，同步相位衬度成像还将成为基础和临床研究的有用工具。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): MRI phase contrast velocity imaging is a widely disseminated on nearly all MRI scanners used for clinical diagnosis of brain disease, cardiac and cardiovascular disease and for neuroscience research. Currently phase contrast imaging of blood flow and CSF motion requires longer scan times with each 2D slice or 3D spatial image requiring additional dimension of velocity encoding requiring greater acquisition time. Given the physiological variation in heart rate, cardiac stroke output and respiratory motion effects on blood and CSF velocity, no less the need to greatly reduce the patients time in the scanner, there is a need to reduce the scan time of phase contrast imaging. To achieve several times faster imaging we propose to develop novel technology to acquire velocity phase images simultaneously instead of seperately. Our new technique called simultaneous multi-slice imaging (SMS) phase contrast (PC) imaging is innovated to obtain 2 -10 phase contrast images recorded simultaneously resulting in nearly this factor of reciprocal reduction in scan time. The availability of the new simultaneous phase contrast imaging technology will give clinicians and researchers the capability of performing significantly improved MRI perfusion measurements in the and these improvements will impact the diagnosis of many different diseases, including stroke, cardiac, cardiovascular diseases. Additionally blood flow and CSF flows which are important quantitative biomarkers useful as physiological imaging in evaluating new drug therapies for diseases. This family of new phase contrast imaging techniques utilizes more efficient pulse sequences that provide major advantages in resolution, slice coverage, SNR and speed. The new simultaneous imaging will have high utility and be highly desirable for use on clinical scanners worldwide. The improved quantitative MRI blood flow imaging offers overall increased speed that is highly commercializable given they provide improved diagnostic approaches to evaluate diseases and further improve specificity and sensitivity in MRI exams. The new technology will be designed, implemented and evaluated on MRI scanners at University of California Berkeley, University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, and Cedar-Sinai Medical Center. Once imaging protocols are optimized they will be further evaluated and optimized in collaborative clinical test sites in Europe, including the major cardiovascular hospital in London, the Royal Brompton Hospital and elsewhere. In addition to establishing their value in medical exams, the simultaneous phase contrast imaging will be made into useful tools for basic and clinical research.