Accelerating sequences in the presence of metal by exploiting the spatial distribution of off-resonance

Purpose: To demonstrate feasibility of exploiting the spatial distribution of off-resonance surrounding metallic implants for accelerating multispectral imaging techniques.

Theory and methods: Multispectral imaging (MSI) techniques perform time-consuming independent three-dimensional acquisitions with varying radio frequency offsets to address the extreme off-resonance from metallic implants. Each off-resonance bin provides a unique spatial sensitivity that is analogous to the sensitivity of a receiver coil and, therefore, provides a unique opportunity for acceleration. Fully sampled MSI was performed to demonstrate retrospective acceleration. A uniform sampling pattern across off-resonance bins was compared with several adaptive sampling strategies using a total hip replacement phantom. Monte Carlo simulations were performed to compare noise propagation of two of these strategies. With a total knee replacement phantom, positive and negative off-resonance bins were strategically sampled with respect to the B0 field to minimize aliasing. Reconstructions were performed with a parallel imaging framework to demonstrate retrospective acceleration.

Results: An adaptive sampling scheme dramatically improved reconstruction quality, which was supported by the noise propagation analysis. Independent acceleration of negative and positive off-resonance bins demonstrated reduced overlapping of aliased signal to improve the reconstruction.

Conclusion: This work presents the feasibility of acceleration in the presence of metal by exploiting the spatial sensitivities of off-resonance bins.