General Electric Company

Ge Precision Healthcare LLC

Glenn Scott Slavin

Thomas K F Foo

Thomas Kwok-Fah Foo

Sandeep Narendra Gupta

Steven D Wolff

Anne Menini

A method of magnetic resonance imaging an object utilizing a plurality of flip angles is provided. The method includes transmitting a first preparation pulse corresponding to a first flip angle of the plurality into the object, and receiving a first MR signal from the object based at least in part on the first preparation pulse. The method further includes transmitting a second preparation pulse corresponding to a second flip angle of the plurality into the object, receiving a second MR signal from the object based at least in part on the second preparation pulse, and generating a T1 mapping of the object based at least in part on the first MR signal and the second MR signal. The second flip angle is different than the first flip angle.

System and method for magnetic resonance imaging an object utilizing a plurality of flip angles

A method for mapping T1 in myocardium includes selecting a recovery delay from EKG signal data; imposing a saturation pulse on the myocardium; waiting the recovery delay; and acquiring bSSFP data after the recovery delay.

Method, apparatus, and article for optimized myocardial T1 mapping

The present invention includes a method and apparatus to perform rapid multi-slice MR imaging without ECG gating or requiring breath-holding that is capable of renal profusion analysis and angiographic screening. An ungated interleaved pulse sequence is applied in rapid succession, followed by a delay interval. The ungated interleaved pulse sequence is repeatedly played out with the predefined delay interval between each application of the pulse sequence. The resulting images provide not only a series of temporal phases of contrast-enhanced blood uptake for renal profusion analysis, but also provide enough dynamic range to include angiographic screening of the renal arteries.

Rapid multi-slice MR perfusion imaging with large dynamic range

A system and a method for obtaining a digital image of a heart of a person are provided. The system scans an internal anatomy of a chest region of the person to obtain scanning data. The system further generates a digital image of four chambers of the heart based on the scanning data.

System and method for automatically obtaining a digital image of a heart

A method and apparatus is disclosed for MR perfusion acquisition using a notched RF saturation pulse. In acquiring such MR data, a volume of slice locations is selected in which MR data is to be acquired. Each given slice is prepared with a notched RF saturation pulse which has a stop-band between a pair of pass-bands. The stop-band is designed to not affect the spins in the next slice in which MR data is to be acquired thereby effectively increasing the TI and increasing SNR and contrast simultaneously. Since the notched saturation pulse saturates all the spins outside of the notched stop-band, the blood in the ventricular chamber is effectively saturated so that the resulting perfusion images have blood pool suppression. Additionally, the use of a 90&deg; presaturation RF pulse provides a high level of immunity to the effects of arrhythmias or other variations in the patient's heart rate. In order to keep the stop-band, or the notch, as wide as possible to overlap the boundaries of each slice location, it is preferable to interleave the acquisition of slice locations.

Growing community of inventors

Silver Spring, MD, United States of America

Glenn Scott Slavin