Abstract
PURPOSE: To demonstrate the feasibility of hepatic 3D MR elastography (MRE) at 0.55 T in healthy volunteers using Hadamard encoding and to study the effects of concomitant fields in the domain of MRE in general. METHODS: Concomitant field effects in MRE are assessed using a Taylor series expansion and an encoding scheme is proposed to study the corresponding effects on 3D MRE at 0.55 T in numerical simulations and in phantom experiments. In addition, five healthy volunteers were enrolled and scanned at 60 Hz mechanical excitation with a Hadamard-encoded 3D MRE sequence at 0.55 T and were also scanned with a reference 3D MRE sequence at 3 T for comparison. The retrieved biomechanical parameters were the magnitude of the complex shear modulus (|G*|), the shear wave speed (Cs), and the loss modulus (G″). Comparison of apparent SNR between 3 T and 0.55 T was performed. RESULTS: Theoretical analysis, numerical simulations and phantom experiments demonstrated that the effects of concomitant fields in 3D MRE at 0.55 T are negligible. In the healthy volunteer experiments, the mean values of |G*|, Cs, and G″ in the liver were 2.1 ± 0.3 kPa, 1.5 ± 0.1 m/s, and 0.8 ± 0.1 kPa at 0.55 T, respectively, and 2.0 ± 0.2 kPa, 1.5 ± 0.1 m/s, and 0.9 ± 0.1 kPa at 3 T, respectively. Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated good agreement between the biomechanical parameters retrieved at 0.55 T and 3 T. A 2.1-fold relative apparent SNR decrease was observed in 3D MRE at 0.55 T in comparison with 3 T. CONCLUSION: Hepatic 3D MRE is feasible at 0.55 T, showing promising initial results in healthy volunteers.