Abstract
PURPOSE: To develop a method for fast pediatric 3D free-breathing abdominal dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and investigate its clinical feasibility. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A combined locally low rank parallel imaging method with soft gating is proposed for free-breathing DCE MRI acquisition. With Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval and informed consent/assent, 23 consecutive pediatric patients were recruited for this study. Free-breathing DCE MRI with ∼1 mm(3) spatial resolution and a 6.5-sec frame rate was acquired on a 3T scanner. Undersampled data were reconstructed with a compressed sensing method without motion correction (FB-CS) and the proposed method (FB-LR). A follow-up respiratory-triggered acquisition (RT-CS) was performed as a reference standard. The reconstructed images were evaluated independently by two radiologists. Wilcoxon tests were performed to test the hypothesis that there was no significant difference between different reconstructions. Quantitative evaluation of contrast dynamics was also performed. RESULTS: The mean score of overall image quality of FB-LR was 4.0 on a 5-point scale, significantly better (P < 0.05) than FB-CS reconstruction (mean score 2.9), and similar to RT-CS (mean score 4.1). FB-LR also matched the temporal fidelity of contrast dynamics with a root mean square error less than 5%. CONCLUSION: Fast 3D free-breathing DCE MRI with high scan efficiency and image quality similar to respiratory-triggered acquisition is feasible in a pediatric clinical setting.