Abstract
INTRODUCTION: MR relaxometry has been used to assess placental exchange function, but methods to date are not sufficiently fast to be robust to placental motion. Magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) permits rapid, voxel-wise, intrinsically co-registered T(1) and T(2) mapping. After characterizing measurement error, we scanned pregnant women during air and oxygen breathing to demonstrate MRF's ability to detect placental oxygenation changes. METHODS: The accuracy of FISP-based, sliding-window reconstructed MRF was tested on phantoms. MRF scans in 9-s breath holds were acquired at 3T in 31 pregnant women during air and oxygen breathing. A mixed effects model was used to test for changes in placenta relaxation times between physiological states, to assess the dependency on gestational age (GA), and the impact of placental motion. RESULTS: MRF estimates of known phantom relaxation times resulted in mean absolute errors for T(1) of 92 ms (4.8%), but T(2) was less accurate at 16 ms (13.6%). During normoxia, placental T(1) = 1825 ± 141 ms (avg ± standard deviation) and T(2) = 60 ± 16 ms (gestational age range 24.3-36.7, median 32.6 weeks). In the statistical model, placental T(2) rose and T(1) remained contant after hyperoxia, and no GA dependency was observed for T(1) or T(2). DISCUSSION: Well-characterized, motion-robust MRF was used to acquire T(1) and T(2) maps of the placenta. Changes with hyperoxia are consistent with a net increase in oxygen saturation. Toward the goal of whole-placenta quantitative oxygenation imaging over time, we aim to implement 3D MRF with integrated motion correction to improve T(2) accuracy.