Novel Reconstruction Method for Three-Dimensional Axial Continuously Moving Table Whole-Body Magnetic Resonance Imaging Featuring Autocalibrated Parallel Imaging GRAPPA

Continuously moving table MR imaging has been successfully evaluated for whole-body tumor staging and metastasis screening. In previous studies it was demonstrated that three-dimensional (3D) slab-selective excitation with lateral readout can provide very efficient k-space coverage when the longitudinal field of view (FOV) is limited. To reduce respiratory artifacts, data acquisition in the thoracoabdominal region of the patient typically must be performed during one single breath hold. This consequently restricts acquisition time and thus spatial resolution. In this work, a novel reconstruction method is introduced for axial 3D moving table data acquisition with lateral readout. The method features table position correction completely in k-space and is compatible with autocalibrated parallel imaging (GRAPPA). Parallel imaging can be applied to increase spatial resolution while maintaining the breath-holding time. A sophisticated protocol for whole-body moving table MRI was developed. The impact of gradient nonlinearity on the featured imaging method was evaluated in phantom and volunteer experiments. Finally, the protocol was optimized toward minimizing residual artifacts. Moving table whole-body MRI with lateral readout was performed in 5 healthy volunteers and was compared with lateral readout data acquired with a GRAPPA accelerated protocol providing increased spatial resolution. Magn Reson Med 61:867-873, 2009. (C) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.