Metabolic Myocardial Mapping with Multi-echo bSSFP: Pilot study in humans on a clinical 3T MRI scanner

Motivation: A noninvasive MR imaging tool for detection of abnormal cardiac metabolism detection is needed for many cardiovascular diseases. Goal(s): Our goal was to develop Deuterated Metabolic Imaging (DMI) on a clinical 3T MRI scanner for human myocardial metabolic mapping. Approach: We investigated a multi-echo bSSFP based sequence and Hierarchical IDEAL reconstruction in simulations, and phantom and in vivo experiments, to isolate deuterated glucose and its products. Results: DMI at 3T was able to distinguish water and glucose, and provided reasonable in vivo metabolic mapping after deuterated glucose injection. Impact: The first study of human cardiac DMI at 3T was performed using multi-echo bSSFP, showing capability to isolate deuterated water and glucose in a 10min scan, and advantages over multi-echo GRE and conventional magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (MRSI).