Bilateral Hip MRI using Dual-Band Excitation with Slab-Phase Modulation

Misung Han¹, Brian Andrew Hargreaves², Roland Krug¹

For conventional high-resolution MRI of the hip to assess cartilage degeneration or the trabecular bone microstructure, only a single hip is imaged at a time because of the relatively large distance between the two hips. However, bilateral 3D hip imaging would allow more accurate diagnosis of pathologies with increased SNR compared to two separate MR scans, and could be also beneficial for dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI of bone marrow. In this work, we demonstrate time-efficient sagittal bilateral hip imaging using dual-slab excitation incorporating slab-phase modulation. This imaging technique was validated in 3D RF-spoiled gradient-echo and 3D balanced steady-state free precession sequences.