• L Mendes Pereira, T Wech, A M Weng, C Kestler, S Veldhoen, T A Bley, and H Köstler.
• Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, University of Würzburg, Germany.
• Magn Reson Med. 2019 Apr 1; 81 (4): 2464-2473.

PurposeThis study aimed to develop a 3D MRI technique to assess lung ventilation in free-breathing and without the administration of contrast agent.MethodsA 3D-UTE sequence with a koosh ball trajectory was developed for a 3 Tesla scanner. An oversampled k-space was acquired, and the direct current signal from the k-space center was used as a navigator to sort the acquired data into 8 individual breathing phases. Gradient delays were corrected, and iterative SENSE was used to reconstruct the individual timeframes. Subsequently, the signal changes caused by motion were eliminated using a 3D image registration technique, and ventilation-weighted maps were created by analyzing the signal changes in the lung tissue. Six healthy volunteers and 1 patient with lung cancer were scanned with the new 3D-UTE and the standard 2D technique. Image quality and quantitative ventilation values were compared between both methods.ResultsUTE-based self-gated noncontrast-enhanced functional lung (SENCEFUL) MRI provided a time-resolved reconstruction of the breathing motion, with a 49% increase of the SNR. Ventilation quantification for healthy subjects was in statistical agreement with 2D-SENCEFUL and the literature, with a mean value of 0.11 ± 0.08 mL/mL for the whole lung. UTE-SENCEFUL was able to visualize and quantify ventilation deficits in a patient with lung tumor that were not properly depicted by 2D-SENCEFUL.ConclusionUTE-SENCEFUL represents a robust MRI method to assess both morphological and functional information of the lungs in 3D. When compared to the 2D approach, 3D-UTE offered ventilation maps with higher resolution, improved SNR, and reduced ventilation artifacts.© 2018 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

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