Abstract #1396

Improved Adiabatic Inversion Design for Myocardial T1-Mapping

Peter Kellman¹, Daniel A. Herzka², Michael Schacht Hansen³

¹NHLBI, NIH, Bethesda, MD, United States; ²Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States; ³NHLBI, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, United States

Myocardial T1-mapping based on Look-Locker methods such as MOLLI rely on ideal inversion recovery. Adiabatic inversion pulses used to mitigate inhomogeneity of transmit field strength do not achieve perfect inversion as a result of transverse relaxation (T2) during the pulse. Imperfect inversion leads directly to a T2-dependent error in the estimate of T1. An improved adiabatic inversion pulse optimized for myocardial T1-mapping was designed and evaluated experimentally. Due to peak power constraints, a tan/tanh design was found to achieve the best inversion performance for a given design specification. Reduced dependence on T1 and T2 facilitate a calibrated correction of T1-estimates.