Feasibility study of stack-of-spirals free breathing ultrashort echo time for lung MRI in patients with malignant tumors at 1.5T

Motivation: Ultrashort echo time (UTE) MR imaging has been developed to visualize lung tissues, but is limited by long acquisition time and capacity for displaying pulmonary tissues. Goal(s): 3D free breathing stack-of-spirals UTE (spiral-UTE) could provide a higher readout efficiency, but its comprehensive performance with and without contrast material for follow-up of patients with identified malignant tumors at 1.5T has not been reported. Approach: Aim to investigate clinical feasibility of spiral-UTE compared to enhanced-VIBE with CT as the reference. Results: Spiral-UTE was superior with improved image qualities for depicting bronchi and lung parenchyma than enhanced-VIBE in lung screening during the oncology patient follow-upsImpact: Spiral-UTE provides a potential alternative to CT for lung follow-up with a significantly superior quality visualization of the pulmonary anatomy than routine enhanced-VIBE