Free breathing Dual-excitation flip-angle 3D T1 mapping using randomized stack of spiral acquisition

Motivation: Cardiac MR (CMR) imaging is a widely used technique that provides important diagnostic and prognostic information in cardiomyopathy. T1 maps and LGE can provide tissue characterization to detect myocardial fibrosis. Goal(s): Our group has developed a 2D free-breathing and self-gated cine and T1 mapping acquisition CAT-SPARCS. This work is to extend the acquisition to 3D T1 mapping. Approach: The proposed acquisition is enabled in a single free-running randomized stack of spiral sequence with a 3-minute acquisition and T1 map is reconstructed by dictionary learning method. Results: The T1 values from the proposed method are comparable to the clinically standard MOLLI sequence. Impact: Our technique could substantially shorten the clinical scan time providing both cine and T1 mapping images.