Technical Advances of T1 Relaxation-Enhanced Steady-State (T1RESS) Sequences with Radial Acquisition for Contrast-Enhanced Examination

Motivation: Sequences from the T1RESS family offer increased lesion conspicuity in contrast-enhanced brain examinations. Recently, radial variants have been developed to improve motion robustness. Goal(s): To enable broader clinical utilization of radial T1RESS sequences. Approach: Dynamic imaging is enabled through combination with GRASP reconstruction. Fat/water separation is achieved by integrating the multi-echo Dixon technique. Further scan acceleration is achieved by applying 1D GRAPPA along the kz dimension. Results: The proposed extensions are demonstrated for brain imaging at 3T in volunteers and patients, revealing dynamic lesion-enhancement patterns, successful fat/water separation, and supplementary scan acceleration with comparable quality and lesion conspicuity. Impact: The proposed technical extensions of radial stack-of-stars T1RESS sequences, including dynamic reconstruction, fat/water separation, and parallel imaging, will enable broader clinical utilization of this novel sequence family and may result in noticeably improved sensitivity for lesion detection throughout the body.