Spiral Phyllotaxis: A Better Way to Construct a 3D Radial Trajectory in MRI

Davide Piccini¹, Arne Littmann², Peter Schmitt², Michael O. Zenge²

In order to exploit the self-navigating properties of 3D radial MRI, the trajectory has to be arranged so that the first readout of each interleave is oriented in superior-inferior direction. If this is done sub-optimally, image quality is degraded. Hence, an innovative trajectory based on spiral phyllotaxis featuring optimized interleaving properties is presented. The trajectory was compared to an Archimedean spiral in phantom experiments and in-vivo. The smooth gradient waveforms of the novel trajectory avoided eddy currents effects and, thus, allowed for whole-heart coronary imaging with highly undersampled data. Moreover, the presented method is intrinsically prepared for self-gated cardiac MRI.