Cornelius von Morze1, Peder EZ Larson1, Simon Hu1, Adam B. Kerr2, Michael Lustig2, James Tropp3, John M. Pauly2, Daniel B. Vigneron1
1Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, UCSF, San Francisco, CA, USA; 2MRSRL, Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; 3GE Healthcare, Fremont, CA, USA
An implementation of GRAPPA parallel imaging for improved SNR efficiency in flyback echo planar spectroscopic imaging is proposed and evaluated, for application to hyperpolarized 13C-1 pyruvate imaging. We investigate a combination of a faster approach to phase encoding through parallel imaging with a slower approach to the echo planar readouts, for a net improvement in SNR efficiency. The expected 40% SNR gain for the slower readouts in this application was found to outweigh estimated reconstruction-related errors and SNR losses, showing good potential for this technique.