Abstract #0223

Fully-Refocused Spatiotemporally-Encoded MRI: Robust MR Imaging in the Presence of Metallic Implants

Noam Ben-Eliezer¹, Eddy Solomon², Elad Harel³, Nava Nevo⁴, Lucio Frydman²

¹Center for Biomedical Imaging, New-York University, New-York, NY, United States; ²Chemical-Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel; ³Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States; ⁴Biological-Regulation, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

A new MR encoding approach has been recently introduced based on sequential encoding of the image spatial domain. An interesting aspect of this Spatiotemporal-Encoding (SPEN) technique, stems from its ability to carry out a progressive, voxel-by-voxel refocusing of all T₂^* dephasing throughout the data acquisition, allowing it to overcome sizable field inhomogeneities. This work demonstrated SPENs potential for imaging near metallic implants, using in-vivo mouse models. Cartesian and Back-Projected SPEN MRI were implemented on a 7T microimaging unit, and compared versus conventional Spin-Echo scheme analogues. In all cases, unambiguously superior images arise from the fully refocused spatiotemporally-encoded protocols.