Respiratory Self-Gating for Free-Breathing Magnetization Transfer MRI of the Abdomen

Weiguo Li¹, Ning Jin², Tianjing Zhang¹, Andrew C. Larson¹

Respiratory self-gated magnetization transfer (RSG-MT) sequence was developed and applied to abdominal organs to generate magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) maps during free breathing (FB) of patients. Results showed that respiratory motion artifacts were significantly reduced and high quality MTR maps were generated. Future studies will evaluate the application of these RSG FB MT techniques for the assessment of liver fibrosis and tumor desmoplasia in clinical settings.