Acquisition of 3He ventilation images, ADC, T2*and B1 maps in a single scan with compressed sensing

In imaging of human lungs with hyperpolarised noble gases, measurements of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and relaxation time provide valuable information for the assessment of lung microstructure. In this work, a sequence was developed for interleaved acquisition of ventilation images, ADC, T2* and flip angle maps in a single scan from the human lungs with a single dose of inhaled 3He at 3T. Spatially registered ventilation images with parametric maps were obtained. The total acquisition time was reduced by random undersampling of the k-space and reconstruction using compressed sensing (CS). The gain in speed was used for an increase in spatial resolution. Mean ADC values from the fully sampled and undersampled CS data exhibit no statistically significant difference in a given subject. The mean T2* values, however, were found to differ significantly, which is attributed to the combined effect of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the fully sampled data and the smoothing effect inherent in CS reconstruction. Copyright (c) 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.