Improved through Slice Resolution in Continuously Moving Table MRI by using a Modified Helical Trajectory

Florian Hoffmann¹, Philipp Ehses², Michael Vlker², Felix A. Breuer², Martin Blaimer², Peter M. Jakob^1,2

One of the first continuously moving table experiments was helical MRI. It uses a radial readout with a linearly increasing projection angle. Helical MRI requires a linear interpolation reconstruction otherwise the table movement provokes artifacts. However, this smears details into neighboring slices. In this work, the angular sampling was modified based on the golden ratio approach. As k-space is covered almost uniformly at any time it is possible to vary the projection number during a sliding window reconstruction or to apply a KWIC-filter. This results in an improved through-slice resolution as demonstrated by phantom and in vivo experiments.