Amir Moussavi1, 2, Martin Uecker1, 3, Tilman Johannes Sumpf1, Roland Tammer1, 2, Jens Frahm1, Susann Boretius1, 4
1Biomedizinische NMR Forschungs GmbH am Max-Planck-Institut fuer biophysikalische Chemie, Goettingen, Germany; 2DFG Research Center for Molecular Biology of the Brain (CMPB), Goettingen, Germany; 3Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley, United States; 4Klinik fr Diagnostische Radiologie, Universittsklinikum Schleswig-Holstein, Kiel, Germany
To avoid the necessity of cardiorespiratory gating, lung MRI of the mouse requires short acquisition times. The combination of highly under-sampled radial FLASH with a nonlinear inverse image reconstruction algorithm allowed for a temporal resolution of 100 ms per image of the mouse lung at a sufficient spatial resolution. Moreover, the lung parenchymal motion and the up and down movement of the thoracic diaphragm were clearly visible while breathing, offering the possibility to monitor breathing irregularities or fast, single-events such as rapid short-term responses to medications.