Hybrid Proton/Carbon Constrained Image Reconstruction for Hyperpolarized Metabolic Imaging

Andreas Sigfridsson¹, Kilian Weiss¹, Sebastian Kozerke¹

Cardiac metabolic imaging after injection of hyperpolarized pyruvate is inherently limited by resolution due to the short acquisition time available. The low resolution may result in signal contamination from the blood pools into myocardial regions, which can compromise analysis of metabolic processes. Here, an approach that uses high-resolution spatial information obtained from proton images to constrain the reconstruction of the carbon images is presented. The technique is evaluated both in simulations and in-vivo, and the results indicate that the signal contamination may be reduced.