Zhongliang Zu1, 2, Ke Li1, 2, Richard Dortch1, 2, Seth Smith1, 2, Mark D. Does1, 2, John Gore1, 2, Daniel Gochberg1,<s
1Institute of Imaging Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States; 2Department of Radiology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States
Conventional CEST sequences contain a long saturation block (several seconds of continuous wave or pulsed irradiation) before acquisition. To fill k-space, several saturation blocks followed by acquisitions may be required, especially in high-resolution imaging. The long scan time limits CEST imaging in clinical applications. Here we present a new CEST imaging method using interleaved balanced steady state free precession (SSFP) acquisitions (named SSFP-CEST) to shorten imaging time. Experiments on creatine/agar phantom show that the SSFP-CEST has similar contrast as that of pulsed-CEST, but the total acquisition time decreases by a factor of ~6.