3 Contrasts in 3 Minutes: Rapid, High-Resolution, and CT-like Head and Neck Imaging by Dual-RF, Dual-Echo UTE

Motivation: Reduction of ionizing radiation for repeat CT imaging of pediatric patients with craniosynostosis.Goal(s): Develop an MRI method for rapid, high-resolution skull imaging with CT-like contrast. Approach: A dual-echo UTE sequence acquires 2 image echoes (proton density-weighted and T1-weighted) in 3 minutes at a voxel size of 0.65x0.65x0.65 mm. A new joint ℓ0-wavelet regularizer and an improved method for calculating the third image with CT-like contrast are developed. Results: In 3 minutes of scan time, 3 co-registered high-resolution images with 3 different contrasts are simultaneously acquired. Image quality is not hindered by the aggressive acceleration factor. Short-T2 specific images strongly resemble CT images. Impact: We present a bone-specific dual-echo UTE MRI method that facilitates unimodal, single-session radiology for pediatric patients with craniosynostosis. The method does not involve ionizing radiation and may reduce the lifetime risk of cancer for patients indicated for repeat CT scans.