The General Hospital Corporation

Siemens Healthcare Gmbh

Jason Stockmann

Lawrence Leroy Wald

Kawin Setsompop

Stefan Popescu

Matthew Scot Rosen

Bruce R Rosen

Bastien Guerin

Keith Aaron Heberlein

Jinmin Xu

Clarissa Zimmerman

Clarissa Z Cooley

Lipid suppression in magnetic resonance imaging ('MRI') is provided on a slice-by-slice basis using tailored local field control that is configured for lipid control for each slice in a planned slice prescription. Only those lipid voxels that fall within the bandwidth of the concurrent RF excitation pulse are targeted. Switched Boffset fields are used to improve lipid suppression pulse performance by pushing water and lipids apart in the frequency domain. Multi-coil Bshim arrays with rapidly switchable output currents that can be turned on during the lipid suppression pulse may be used. A convex optimization may be used to jointly solve for the shim currents and the lipid suppression pulse center frequency and bandwidth to optimize lipid suppression while minimizing water signal loss.

Lipid suppression in magnetic resonance imaging using multi-coil local Bfield control

Techniques are disclosed related to increasing prior limits imposed on MR gradient switching speed (dB/dt) without causing significant discomfort or severe pain perception to patients. The technique disclosed herein do so by modifying the pulsing gradient fields that are ordinarily available for MR imaging protocols. Doing so stimulates the peripheral nerves and thus enables a quick, reversible, and complete inhibition of action potential propagation through the stimulated region of tissue, referred to as a nerve conduction block.

Avoidance of peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) using induced analgesia

Described here are systems and methods for performing magnetic resonance imaging ('MRI') using radio frequency ('RF') phase gradients to provide spatial encoding of magnetic resonance signals rather than the conventional magnetic field gradients. Particularly, the systems and methods described here implement swept RF pulses (e.g., wideband, uniform rate, and smooth transition (&#x201c;WURST&#x201d;) RF pulses) and a quadratic phase correction to enable RF phase gradient encoding in inhomogeneous background (B) magnetic fields.

Methods for spatially encoding magnetic resonance signals with swept radio frequency (RF) pulses applied with RF spatial phase gradients

A method for increasing field of view (FOV) in magnetic resonance imaging includes determining linear field gradients of associated with a gradient coil of a magnetic resonance (MR) scanner and using the MR scanner to acquire a k-space dataset representative of a patient using a plurality of readout gradient amplitudes. An extended FOV image is generated based on the k-space dataset using an iterative reconstruction process to solve a forward model that incorporates a measurement of gradient distortion as a deviation from the linear field gradients.

Field of view increase in magnetic resonance imaging using nonlinear gradients and generalized iterative reconstruction

A portable magnetic resonance imaging ('MRI') system that uses static magnetic field inhomogeneities in the main magnet for encoding the spatial location of nuclear spins is provided. Also provided is a spatial-encoding scheme for a low-field, low-power consumption, light-weight, and easily transportable MRI system. In general, the portable MRI system spatially encodes images using spatial inhomogeneities in the polarizing magnetic field rather than using gradient fields. Thus, an inhomogeneous static field is used to polarize, readout, and encode an image of the object. To provide spatial encoding, the magnet is rotated around the object to generate a number of differently encoded measurements. An image is then reconstructed by solving for the object most consistent with the data.

System and method for portable magnetic resonance imaging using a rotating array of permanent magnets

Described here are systems and methods for using excited slice profiles to improve the point spread function ('PSF') of super-resolution slices in SLIDER acquisitions while preserving all of the advantages of the SLIDER technique. The techniques described here may generally be referred to as 'Generalized SLIDER' (&#x201c;g-SLIDER&#x201d;).

Systems and methods for generalized slice dithered enhanced resolution magnetic resonance imaging

A system and method for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and static field (B0) shimming. A coil system includes a conductive loop configured to be arranged proximate to a region of interest (ROI). The coil system also includes an alternating current (AC) circuit electrically connecting the conductive loop to an AC electrical connection configured to be coupled to an MRI system to communicate medical imaging signals received by the conductive loop from the ROI during a medical imaging procedure to the MRI system. The coil system further includes a direct current (DC) circuit electrically connecting the conductive loop to a DC electrical connection configured to be coupled to a DC power source and a plurality of circuit components configured to block DC signals from reaching the AC electrical connection in order to produce a spatially varying static magnetic field for shimming inhomogenieties of the static field.

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Cambridge, MA, United States of America

Jason Stockmann