3D free-breathing simultaneous myocardial T1 and T1ρ mapping with B1+ correction and subject-specific non-rigid motion correction

Motivation: Multi-parametric mapping is useful for comprehensive myocardial tissue characterization. However, 3D free-breathing cardiac multi-parametric mapping faces challenges. Goal(s): Develop a 3D free-breathing cardiac multi-parametric mapping framework that is robust to confounders of motion, fat and field inhomogeneities and validate it for joint T1 and T1ρ mapping at 3T. Approach: A subject-specific respiratory motion model was constructed to enable intra-bin 3D translational and inter-bin non-rigid motion correction. B1+ inhomogeneities were corrected with optimized dual-flip-angle strategy. A dual-echo Dixon readout was adopted for water-only mapping. Results: The proposed technique achieved good agreement with conventional techniques in measuring T1 and T1ρ in phantoms and healthy subjects. Impact: A novel framework was proposed for efficient 3D free-breathing multi-parametric mapping. The 3D simultaneous cardiac T1 and T1ρ mapping technique with scan time of ~ 5 minutes may serve as an efficient tool for diagnosing ischemic and non-ischemic cardiomyopathies.