Abstract #2357

Magnetization Transfer Prepared Gradient Echo CEST MRI at 7 Tesla

Zhuozhi Dai¹, Jim Ji², Gang Xiao³, Gen Yan¹, Zhiwei Shen⁴, Guishan Zhang¹, Lvhao Wang¹, Phillip Zhe Sun⁵, Renhua Wu¹

¹Medical Imaging, Medical College of Shantou University, shantou, guangdong, China; ²Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States; ³Hanshan Normal University, Chaozhou, Guangdong, China; ⁴the provincial key laboratory of medical molecular imaging, Shantou, Guangdong, China; ⁵Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, MGH and Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA, United States

CEST MRI is a relatively new contrast mechanism that is promising for clinical translation in a host of diseases including stroke, tumor and multiple sclerosis. However, the conventional CEST MRI requires significant sequence development and is susceptible to field inhomogeneity-induced distortion at high field. To address these limitations, we evaluated the magnetization transfer prepared gradient echo (MTPGE) MRI for CEST imaging. We validated and optimized the proposed MTPGE in creatine-gel phantom, and demonstrated the endogenous amide proton transfer (APT) MRI in vivo.