Multishot rosette trajectories for spectrally selective MR imaging.

Abstract

In nuclear magnetic resonance, different spectral components often correspond to different chemical species and as such, spectral selectivity can be a valuable tool for diagnostic imaging. In the work presented here, a multishot image acquisition method based upon rosette K-space trajectories has been developed and implemented for spectrally selective magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Parametric forms for the gradient waveforms and design constraints are derived, and an example multishot gradient design is presented. The spectral behavior for this imaging method is analyzed in a simulation model. For frequencies that are near to the resonant frequency, this method results in a lower intensity, but undistorted image, while for frequencies that are off-resonance by a large amount, the object is incoherently dephased into noise. A method by which acquisitions are delayed by small amounts is introduced to further reduce the residual intensity for off-resonant signals. An image reconstruction method based on convolution gridding, including a correction method for small amounts of magnetic field inhomogeneity, is implemented. Finally, the spectral selectivity is demonstrated in vivo in a study in which both water and lipid images are generated from a single imaging data set.