Abstracts Category : Other

Development of Quantitative Fast Imaging with Steady-StateFree Precession (FISP) Techniques for High Field PreclinicalMagnetic Resonance Imaging

by Ying Gao Gao

Preclinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) iscritical in the investigation of pathophysiology and therapies.High-field (>= 4.7 T) preclinical MRI scanners have beendeveloped to quantitatively evaluate disease status and theefficacy of novel therapies in a wide variety of rodent models withrigorous validation. High magnetic fields provide increasedsignal-to-noise ratio (SNR) that can be traded for spatial /temporal resolution which is extremely valuable in preclinicalimaging. However, high-field preclinical MRI systems also facechallenges that affect imaging quality, in which B0 inhomogenietiesare a major source of artifacts and entail difficulties ofconventional clinical acquisitions in low-field settings applied athigh fields. In this work, three MRI techniques were developed forhigh-field preclinical MRI scanners exploiting a fast imaging withsteady-state free precession (FISP) acquisition scheme as atechnical core to circumvent the significant off-resonanceartifacts on high field MRI scanners. First, a FISP-basedLook-Locker T1 measurement was developed asa non-invasive and sensitive imaging marker to quantitativelyassess autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease (ARPKD) liverdisease in the PCK rat model of ARPKD. Second, a rapid andquantitative arterial spin labeling (ASL)-FISP technique wasdeveloped for high-field preclinical MRI scanners to provideperfusion-weighted images in less than 2 s with minimal imageartifacts and further investigated in neuroimaging. Third, aninitial preclinical 7 T MRI implementation of the highly novelmagnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) methodology was developedand <i>in vivo</i> preclinical MRF results in mousekidneys and brain tumor models demonstrated an inherent resistanceto respiratory motion artifacts as well as sensitivity to knownpathology. Overall, FISP-based quantitative MRI techniquesdeveloped here will create a wealth of opportunities forpreclinical imaging applications and inform future clinical imagingstudies.Advisors/Committee Members: Karathanasis, Efstathios (Committee Chair), Flask, Chris (Advisor).