Contrast enhanced MR imaging of the liver is used routinely in the clinic for detecting and characterizing liver lesions including hepatocellular carcinomas (HCC). In the current clinical standard, a pre-contrast image is acquired during a breath hold followed by three identical scans at different times after the injection of contrast – each in a separate breath hold. The goal of this study is to develop and validate an MRI method to replace the first of these three post-contrast breath hold images with a dynamic series of images to better capture the temporal changes of lesion contrast within the breath-hold period. An interleaved variable density sampling pattern is used with view-sharing reconstruction to accelerate imaging and acquire a volumetric high spatial resolution image of the liver every 4-6 seconds. During the first phase of this project, technical developments to this sequence are tested in a group of 10 individuals with known focal nodular hyperplasia (FNH).
Evaluation of a Novel Time-Resolved Liver Imaging Method
This project was funded by:
The term of this project was: October 2013 to December 2013
The number of subjects scanned during this project was: 10