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Fixed Angle Single Rotation CEST (FASR-CEST) sequence for reducing saturation time
Yi Wang1, Yang Fan2, Bing Wu2, and Jia-Hong Gao1

1School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China, People's Republic of, 2MR Research Group, GE Healthcare China, Beijing, China, People's Republic of

Synopsis

In CEST imaging, when saturation time is not sufficient long (empirically smaller than 0.8s), rotation effect would appear and contaminate with saturation effect, making the signal unavailable for further analysis. Considering the inhomogeneity of B0 and B1 in reality, we propose a novel Fixed Angle Single Rotation CEST(FASR-CEST) sequence to overcome the restriction, successfully reducing the saturation time to about 0.5s while keeping identical effect as CEST sequence with long saturation time, with the help of analytical calibration method in another abstract. Effect of the sequence is verified with vitro and in vivo data.

PURPOSE

Rotation effect is another effect during saturation apart from saturation effect, referring to the process of magnetization perpendicular to the saturation direction (ωeff, for detail see below). The rotation effect would contaminate CEST signal when saturation time is not sufficiently long(empirically tsat<0.8s), which places constrains on repeatable quantification in practices1. Traditionally this requires restrictively long saturation time, while the concomitant SAR and long scan time would impose a concern. Although sophisticated quantification model can describe rotation effect2, it is unavailable to be applied in reality. In this work, a novel Fixed Angle Single Rotation CEST (FASR-CEST) method is proposed which could effectively diminish the rotation effect even if a short saturation period (<0.5s).

METHOD

Based on Zaiss’es analytical solution of Z value2,3, process of chemical saturation transfer with saturation pulse amplitude B1 and offset Δω could be treated as T1ρ relaxation along the direction of ωeff (ωeff=(γB1,0,Δω)), combined with T2ρ relaxation perpendicular to the direction of ωeff (Fig. 1b). If there is still nonzero magnetization on T2ρ direction (MT2ρ) at the end of saturation pulse, it has net component in Z axis and the rotation effect takes place. Short saturation time will very likely induce rotation effect. To avoid this, rotation pulses before or after rectangular saturation may be proposed to decrease MT2ρ or its projection to Z axis3,4. Ideally, the flip angle of the rotation pulse satisfies β=θ, . Considering the inhomogeneity of both B0 and B1, the direction of ωeff is varied. Then, the flip angle β should not always be β=θ as supposed, which would still induce rotation effect. To overcome the defect, only a rectangular rotation pulse before saturation pulse is used (Single Rotation). The rectangular pulse is used as it can decrease difference between β and θ due to unideal B1. Besides, because of inhomogeneous B0, the rotation angles changes with Δω. Thus, the interpolation method for B0 correction would no longer be suitable. To overcome this issue, the rotation angle is fixed to a single value according to the offset frequency the researcher is most interested in (Fixed Angle) (Fig. 1a). To compare the signal from FASR-CEST sequence (small tsat) with that from conventional CEST, an analytical quantificationmethod (for details see our another abstract) is used, which converts MTRasym value to ΔR1ρ or ΔRcalib1ρ.

EXPERIMENTS

Firstly, phantoms with different solutes (glucose and glutamate) densities and different relaxation times (adjusted with MnCl2) were prepared and used to test effects of FASR-CEST sequence. Continuous wave rectangular saturation pulse followed by a SE-EPI sequence was used for CEST Imaging. Conventional CEST sequence with B1=1μT, TR=2s, tsat=1.5s was used first acquired. Then, a FASR-CEST sequence with B1=1μT, TR=2s, tsat=0.5s and fixed angle β=14.93o (corresponding to offset frequency around 1.25ppm) was scanned. As comparison, the same CEST sequence with a reduced saturation period (tsat=0.5s) was also scanned. Frequency offsets were from -6ppm to +6ppm. After phantom experiment, in vivo data was acquired on a healthy subject. Three pairs of TR& for CEST imaging were used: TR=2s,tsat=1.5s; TR=1.5s,tsat=1s; TR=7s,tsat=5s, and FASR-CEST sequence was also scanned with TR=2s,tsat=0.5s and fixed angle β=14.93o (corresponding to around 1.25ppm). For each experiment, corresponding B1 map, T1 map and T2 map were also acquired for quantification.

RESULT

ΔRcalib1ρ urves from two different phantoms and two sequences (CEST with tsat=1.5s and FASR-CEST) are shown in Fig. 2b. It can be seen that the ΔRcalib1ρ value from FASR-CEST around 1.25ppm fits well to that from CEST with tsat=1.5s. Besides ΔRcalib1ρ map on 1.25ppm from FASR-CEST is also nearly the same with the reference CEST (Fig. 2c, 2d). However, when a short saturation period tsat=0.5s was used, rotation effect could be obviously observed in an image with almost no effective contrast (Fig. 2e). The effect of FASR-CEST would be similar in vivo data. (Fig. 3)

DISCUSSION and CONSLUSION

Reproducible quantification in CEST is hurdled by the rotation effect. In practice, it is often non-practical to have sufficiently long saturation period for the rotation effects to be dissipated. In this work a FASR-CEST sequence was proposed to overcome this constrain, phantom and in vivo experiment demonstrated that even with a short saturation period relatively constant CEST quantification can be obtained under varying imaging parameters. FARS-CEST is easy to implement and also help to maintain a low SAR level. Further optimization of this prototype may help its application to other more general saturation strategies.

Acknowledgements

No acknowledgement found.

References

1.Moritz Zaiss, Zhongliang Zu, Junzhong Xu et al., A combined analytical solution for chemicalexchange saturation transfer and semi-solidmagnetization transfer, NMR Biomed. 2015; 28(2): 217-230

2. Moritz Zaiss, Peter Bachert, Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) andMR Z-spectroscopy in vivo: a review of theoreticalapproaches and methods, Phys. Med. Biol. 2013; 58(22): 221-269

3. Moritz Zaiss, Peter Bachert, Exchange-dependent relaxation in the rotatingframe for slow and intermediate exchange –modeling off-resonant spin-lock and chemicalexchange saturation transfer, NMR Biomed. 2013; 26(5): 507-518

4. Tao Jin, Seong-Gi Kim, Advantages of chemical exchange-sensitivespin-lock (CESL) over chemical exchangesaturation transfer (CEST) for hydroxyl– andamine–water proton exchange studies, NMR Biomed., 2014; 27(11): 1313-1324

Figures

FIG.1 (a) paradigm of FASR-CEST sequence. (b) illustration of , magnetization and , relaxation.

FIG.2 (a) mask for curves calculation. (b) ΔRcalib1ρ curves from CEST sequence (long tsat) and FASR-CEST sequence (short tsat) of two phantoms. (c)(d)(e) ΔRcalib1ρ map at 1.25ppm from CEST (long tsat), FASR-CEST (short tsat) and CEST (short tsat).

FIG.3 (a) mask of a healthy subject’s brain.(b)(c) MTRasym and ΔR1ρ curves from CEST sequence with different combination of TR & tsat, and from FASR-CEST sequence with short tsat



Proc. Intl. Soc. Mag. Reson. Med. 24 (2016)
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