We describe a fast field-echo Magnetic Resonance Elastography pulse sequence to measure liver stiffness in less than half the breath hold time (≈6.3 sec/slice) of the conventional implementation. Key features include: 1) non-alternating motion encoding gradients to allow a shorter TR while maintaining appropriate gradient waveform polarity synchronization with the applied mechanical motion; 2) interleaved flow saturation pre-pulses to suppress flow; and 3) pseudorandom undersampling k-space with Compressed SENSE reconstruction. The technique was validated in two gel phantoms differing in stiffness and used to evaluate liver stiffness in five volunteers.
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