The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.

The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.

Date of Patent:
Jul. 03, 2012

Filed:

Oct. 20, 2009
Applicants:

Jon-fredrik Nielsen, West Bloomfield, MI (US);

Krishna S. Nayak, Los Angeles, CA (US);

Inventors:

Jon-Fredrik Nielsen, West Bloomfield, MI (US);

Krishna S. Nayak, Los Angeles, CA (US);

Assignee:

University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA (US);

Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Assistant Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
G01V 3/00 (2006.01);
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
Abstract

Referenceless techniques for flow imaging are described that exploit a refocusing property of balanced steady state free precession ('SSFP') magnetic resonance imaging ('MRI'), and achieve up to approximately a 50% reduction in total scan time. With the echo time set to one half of the sequence repetition time (TE=TR/2), non-flow-related image phase tends to vary smoothly across the field-of-view, and can be estimated from static tissue regions to produce a phase reference for nearby voxels containing flowing blood. These approaches produce accurate in vivo one-dimensional velocity estimates in half the scan time compared with conventional balanced SSFP phase-contrast methods. The feasibility of referenceless time-resolved 3D flow imaging (called “7D” flow) is demonstrated for a carotid bifurcation application from just three acquisitions. Related systems are also described. Other attributes such as blood acceleration can also be imaged with such techniques.


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