Motion-insensitive multi-contrast intracranial vascular imaging:Feasibility of self-navigated motion-detection from iSNAP sequence

Motivation: The multi-contrast intracranial vascular imaging sequence iSNAP is less sensitive to motion due to the use of 3D radial readout, but image blurring and thus decreased visibility of distal small vessels may still occur in the case of large head motion. Goal(s): To evaluate the feasibility of estimating the continuous head motion from iSNAP k-space data under different temporal resolutions. Approach: Subsets of iSNAP's 3D radial k-space data were used to reconstruct a series of low-resolution images.Then the SPM toolbox was used to perform rigid registration,between the image volumes. Results: The temporal profiles of the motion parameters are well estimated. Impact: The results indicate the head motion can be well estimated from iSNAP. The estimated motion parameters can be used to correct the k-space data in the future, thus allowing reconstruction of motion-free iSNAP images.