Purpose: To develop a fast and flexible free‐breathing dynamic volumetric MRI technique, iterative Golden‐angle RAdial Sparse Parallel MRI (iGRASP), that combines compressed sensing, parallel imaging, and golden‐angle radial sampling.Methods: Radial k‐space data are acquired continuously using the golden‐angle scheme and sorted into time series by grouping an arbitrary number of consecutive spokes into temporal frames. An iterative reconstruction procedure is then performed on the undersampled time series where joint multicoil sparsity is enforced by applying a total‐variation constraint along the temporal dimension. Required coil‐sensitivity profiles are obtained from the time‐averaged data.Results: iGRASP achieved higher acceleration capability than either parallel imaging or coil‐by‐coil compressed sensing alone. It enabled dynamic volumetric imaging with high spatial and temporal resolution for various clinical applications, including free‐breathing dynamic contrast‐enhanced imaging in the abdomen of both adult and pediatric patients, and in the breast and neck of adult patients.Conclusion: The high performance and flexibility provided by iGRASP can improve clinical studies that require robustness to motion and simultaneous high spatial and temporal resolution. Magn Reson Med 72:707–717, 2014.

Increased mean kurtosis value and the presence of irregular circumferential enhancement were independent risk factors for predicting microvascular invasion of hepatocellular carcinoma. PurposeTo evaluate the potential role of diffusion kurtosis imaging and conventional magnetic resonance (MR) imaging findings including standard monoexponential model of diffusion-weighted imaging and morphologic features for preoperative prediction of microvascular invasion (MVI) of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).Materials and MethodsInstitutional review board approval and written informed consent were obtained. Between September 2015 and November 2016, 84 patients (median age, 54 years; range, 29–79 years) with 92 histopathologically confirmed HCCs (40 MVI-positive lesions and 52 MVI-negative lesions) were analyzed. Preoperative MR imaging examinations including diffusion kurtosis imaging (b values: 0, 200, 500, 1000, 1500, and 2000 sec/mm2) were performed and kurtosis, diffusivity, and apparent diffusion coefficient maps were calculated. Morphologic features of conventional MR images were also evaluated. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were used to evaluate the relative value o...

Integrated whole-body PET/MR facilitates the implementation of a broad variety of respiratory motion correction strategies, taking advantage of the strengths of both modalities. The goal of this study was the quantitative evaluation with clinical data of different MR- and PET-data–based motion correction strategies for integrated PET/MR. Methods: The PET and MR data of 20 patients were simultaneously acquired for 10 min on an integrated PET/MR system after administration of ¹⁸F-FDG or ⁶⁸Ga-DOTANOC. Respiratory traces recorded with a bellows were compared against MR self-gating signals and signals extracted from PET raw data with the sensitivity method, by applying principal component analysis (PCA) or Laplacian eigenmaps and by using a novel variation combining the former and either of the latter two. Gated sinograms and MR images were generated accordingly, followed by image registration to derive MR motion models. Corrected PET images were reconstructed by incorporating this information into the reconstruction. An optical flow algorithm was applied for PET-based motion correction. Gating and motion correction were evaluated by quantitative analysis of apparent tracer uptake, lesion volume, displacement, contrast, and signal-to-noise ratio. Results: The correlation between bellows- and MR-based signals was 0.63 ± 0.19, and that between MR and the sensitivity method was 0.52 ± 0.26. Depending on the PET raw-data compression, the average correlation between MR and PCA ranged from 0.25 ± 0.30 to 0.58 ± 0.33, and the range was 0.25 ± 0.30 to 0.42 ± 0.34 if Laplacian eigenmaps were applied. By combining the sensitivity method and PCA or Laplacian eigenmaps, the maximum average correlation to MR could be increased to 0.74 ± 0.21 and 0.70 ± 0.19, respectively. The selection of the best PET-based signal for each patient yielded an average correlation of 0.80 ± 0.13 with MR. Using the best PET-based respiratory signal for gating, mean tracer uptake increased by 17 ± 19% for gating, 13 ± 10% for MR-based motion correction, and 18 ± 15% for PET-based motion correction, compared with the static images. Lesion volumes were 76 ± 31%, 83 ± 18%, and 74 ± 22% of the sizes in the static images for gating, MR-based motion correction, and PET-based motion correction, respectively. Conclusion: Respiratory traces extracted from MR and PET data are comparable to those based on external sensors. The proposed PET-driven gating method improved respiratory signals and overall stability. Consistent results from MR- and PET-based correction methods enable more flexible PET/MR scan protocols while achieving higher PET image quality.

Purpose To demonstrate dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the prostate with both high spatial and temporal resolution via a combination of golden-angle radial k-space sampling, compressed sensing, and parallel-imaging reconstruction (GRASP), and to compare image quality and lesion depiction between GRASP and conventional DCE in prostate cancer patients. Materials and Methods Twenty prostate cancer patients underwent two 3T prostate MRI examinations on separate dates, one using standard DCE (spatial resolution 3.0 × 1.9 × 1.9 mm, temporal resolution 5.5 sec) and the other using GRASP (spatial resolution 3.0 × 1.1 × 1.1 mm, temporal resolution 2.3 sec). Two radiologists assessed measures of image quality and dominant lesion size. The experienced reader recorded differences in contrast arrival times between the dominant lesion and benign prostate. Results Compared with standard DCE, GRASP demonstrated significantly better clarity of the capsule, peripheral/transition zone boundary, urethra, and periprostatic vessels; image sharpness; and lesion conspicuity for both readers (P < 0.001–0.020). GRASP showed improved interreader correlation for lesion size (GRASP: r = 0.691–0.824, standard: r = 0.495–0.542). In 8/20 cases, only GRASP showed earlier contrast arrival in tumor than benign; in no case did only standard DCE show earlier contrast arrival in tumor. Conclusion High spatiotemporal resolution prostate DCE is possible with GRASP, which has the potential to improve image quality and lesion depiction as compared with standard DCE. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2015;41:1365–1373.