Center-Acquisition-At-Partial-Ramp Imaging (CAPRI) for the Reduction of Off-Resonance and T2 Induced Blurring Artifacts

Anna-Katinka Bracher¹, Daniel Kammer¹, Erich Hell², Johannes Ulrici², Volker Rasche¹

In UTE imaging the k-space center is acquired during ramp-up of the read-out gradient. This leads to a quadratic T2 decay during acquisition of k-space center which effects the image quality. By applying a small prephasing gradient the k-space center is sampled at a higher read-out gradient and hence much faster than in the conventional UTE technique. The faster sampling causes less T2 decay during k-center sampling with a concomitant reduction of image blur due to T2 and off-resonance effects.