Interventional navigation at a portable MRI system: A pilot study

Motivation: Low-field MRI's portability and safety make it appealing for real-time interventional navigation and bedside evaluations, but it lacks efficient navigation strategies. Goal(s): Our goal was to demonstrate the potential of low-field MRI in navigation by designing efficient and high-resolution echo-planar acquisition sequences. Approach: We harnessed low-field MRI's long T2 and short T1 properties to design short-TR EPI sequences for real-time navigation and multi-shot EPI sequences for bedside postoperative assessments. Results: With the short-TR 2D EPI sequence, real-time needle insertion images were successfully obtained, and was improved after denoising. In a self-made resolution phantom, the use of multi-shot EPI greatly improved the image resolution. Impact: The combination of low-field portable EPI sequences and denoising algorithms highlights their time efficiency in navigation, thus expanding the prospects for low-field portable MRI in the field of navigation.