Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation

Canon Medical Systems Corporation

University of California

Cheng Ouyang

Mitsue Miyazaki

Xiangzhi Zhou

Aiming Lu

Christine Chung

A magnetic resonance imaging apparatus according to an embodiment includes sequence controlling circuitry and processing circuitry. The sequence controlling circuitry performs a first acquisition and a second acquisition, the first acquisition including executing a preparation module corresponding to a first Echo Time (TE) value and subsequently performing an acquisition sequence, the second acquisition including executing the preparation module corresponding to a second TE value different from the first TE value and subsequently performing the acquisition sequence, the acquisition sequence being a pulse sequence including applying an RF excitation pulse in presence of a gradient magnetic field, and subsequently applying an RF re-focusing pulse in presence of another gradient magnetic field having an opposite polarity to that of the gradient magnetic field. The processing circuitry extracts at least one of a signal related to a first fat and a signal related to a second fat.

Magnetic resonance imaging apparatus and magnetic resonance imaging method

A magnetic resonance imaging apparatus according to an embodiment includes sequence control circuitry. The sequence control circuitry executes a first pulse sequence that acquires data by radial sampling. The sequence control circuitry executes a second pulse sequence a plurality of times by changing a frequency of magnetization transfer (MT) pulses, the second pulse sequence acquiring data by Cartesian sampling after applying an MT pulse.

A magnetic resonance imaging apparatus includes a sequence controller. The sequence controller is configured to apply MT (Magnetization Transfer) pulses having a frequency different from a resonance frequency of free water protons and then acquires magnetic resonance signals of an object to be imaged. The sequence controller acquires the magnetic resonance signals for each of multiple frequencies while changing the frequency of MT pulses within a frequency band based on a T2 relaxation time of restricted protons contained in the object to be imaged.

Magnetic resonance imaging apparatus

A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, method and/or computer readable medium is configured to effect magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) images with reduced motion artifacts includes acquiring a plurality of k-space data sets by traversing a plurality of radial trajectories in three-dimensional (3D) k-space, generating a plurality of 3D MR images derived from k-space populated by the k-space data sets, aligning the 3D MR images with respect to each other, determining one or more motion parameters for the object based upon the aligning, modifying values of k-space data sets using the determined one or more motion parameters, generating a motion-corrected 3D MR image from a combination of acquired k-space data sets including the modified values.

Motion correction for magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) with 3D radial acquisitions

Chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) effects are enhanced by forming, for each of a plurality of magnetization transfer (MT) offset frequencies within a specified first range, a respective image representing CEST effects. A subset of the formed CEST images is displayed and a preferred or optimum one is selected from a display screen. The thus identified target frequency is then used to generate a composite enhanced CEST image based upon a combination of formed CEST images having MT frequencies within a specified second, smaller range, around the identified target frequency.

Systems, methods and GUI for chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) analysis

A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, method and/or computer readable medium is configured to effect MR imaging based upon arterial spin labeling (ASL) using a tagging image and a control image. The tagging image is based upon applying a tagging pulse train including a plurality of saturation pulses to a tagging area followed by applying a first imaging pulse train to an imaging area; and the control image is based upon applying a control pulse train to a control area followed by applying a second imaging pulse train to the imaging area. The tagging area, the control area, and the imaging area are located at respectively different positions in relation to the object being imaged.

Pseudo-continuous asymmetric signal targeting alternating radio frequency (pASTAR) for magnetic resonance angiography

A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, method and/or computer readable storage medium is configured to effect enhanced magnetic transfer (MT) effects and chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) effects. The configured techniques include irradiating an object in an MRI gantry by applying a sequence of magnetic transfer (MT) pulses over a range of different frequencies, and then applying an MR imaging sequence to the irradiated object.

Enhancement of MT effect and/or CEST effect

A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system and method (a) acquires k-space data for a patient ROI over a predetermined band of RF frequencies using RF excitation pulses having respectively corresponding RF frequencies incrementally offset from a nuclear magnetic resonant (NMR) Larmor frequency for free nuclei over a predetermined range of different offset frequencies in which target macromolecule responses are expected and to process such acquired data into spectral data for voxels in the ROI; (b) analyzes the acquired spectral data to provide spectral peak width data corresponding to tissue values in the ROI for macromolecules participating in magnetization transfer contrast (MTC) effects producing said spectral data; and (c) stores and/or displays data representative of tissue values of the ROI which values are different for different tissues.

MRI detection of tissue macromolecular characteristics using MTC effects

A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system and method (a) acquires k-space data for a patient ROI over a predetermined band of RF frequencies using RF excitation pulses having respectively corresponding RF frequencies incrementally offset from a nuclear magnetic resonant (NMR) Larmor frequency for free nuclei thus causing chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) effects and to process such acquired data into Z-spectra data for voxels in the ROI; (b) analyzes the acquired Z-spectra data to provide spectral peak width data corresponding to T2/T2* tissue values in the ROI for macromolecules participating in magnetization transfer contrast (MTC) effects producing said Z-spectra data; and (c) stores and/or displays data representative of T2/T2* tissue values of the ROI which values are different for different tissues.

Growing community of inventors

Vernon Hills, IL, United States of America

Cheng Ouyang