Zero echo time (ZTE) mri for assessment of lung parenchyma density changes by native MRI

原则上，根据局部肺实质密度变化的量化来量化局部通气量是可能的。由于缺乏电离辐射和动态成像的可能性，MRI可能在肺功能的纵向监测中发挥重要作用。然而，在目前的MRI方案下，低密度短T2*肺组织的成像是具有挑战性的。随着超短回波时间技术(UTE)在常规临床扫描仪上应用的可能性，不同方法的肺功能成像已取得初步结果。目前相当长的RF/线圈前端的切换时间目前仍然限制了可能的最小回声时间(TE)。已经证明，通过更换整个RF/线圈前端，当接受系统的重大修改时，几乎可以忽略不计的RF/线圈前端切换时间，这干扰了监管机构对临床使用的批准。本项目的目标是通过简单的触发线将专用的只接收单元集成到扫描仪硬件上，该触发线已经在供应商的未修改的系统上提供，因此不会干扰系统的监管方面，但允许线圈切换时间在5微米S以下。

In principle, quantification of the local ventilation is possible according to the quantification of local lung parenchyma density changes. Due to the lack of ionizing radiation and the possibility of dynamic imaging, MRI may play an important role especially for longitudinal monitoring of the lung function. However, with current MRI protocols, imaging of the low-density short T2* lung tissues is challenging. With the possibility of using ultrashort echo time techniques (UTE) on conventional clinical scanners, initial results have been made regarding functional lung imaging with different methods. The currently rather long switching times of the RF/coil-frontend currently is still limiting the minimal echo time (TE) possible. It has been shown that by replacing the entire RF/coil frontend, almost negligible RF/coil-frontend switching times can be achieved, when accepting a major modification of the system, which interferes with regulatory approval for clinical usage.It is the objective of this project to integrate a dedicated receive-only unit interfaced to the scanner hardware by a simple trigger line, which is provided already on the non-modified system of the vendor, and as such not interfering with regulatory aspects of the system, but enabling a coil switching time below 5 micro s.