• Haikun Qi, Jie Sun, Huiyu Qiao, Xihai Zhao, Rui Guo, Niranjan Balu, Chun Yuan, and Huijun Chen.
• Center for Biomedical Imaging Research, Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Medicine, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
• Magn Reson Med. 2018 Dec 1; 80 (6): 2598-2608.

PurposeTo propose a technique that can produce different T1 and T2 contrasts in a single scan for simultaneous T1 and T2 mapping of the carotid plaque (SIMPLE).MethodsAn interleaved 3D golden angle radial trajectory was used in conjunction with T2 preparation with variable duration (TEprep ) and inversion recovery pulses. Sliding window reconstruction was adopted to reconstruct images at different inversion delay time and TEprep for joint T1 and T2 fitting. In the fitting procedure, a rapid B1 correction method was presented. The accuracy of SIMPLE was investigated in phantom experiments. In vivo scans were performed on 5 healthy volunteers with 2 scans each, and on 5 patients with carotid atherosclerosis.ResultsThe phantom T1 and T2 estimations of SIMPLE agreed well with the standard methods with the percentage difference smaller than 7.1%. In vivo T1 and T2 for normal carotid vessel wall were 1213 ± 48.3 ms and 51.1 ± 1.7 ms, with good interscan repeatability. Alternations of T1 and T2 in plaque regions were in agreement with the conventional multicontrast imaging findings.ConclusionThe proposed SIMPLE allows simultaneous T1 and T2 mapping of the carotid artery in less than 10 minutes, serving as a quantitative tool with good accuracy and reproducibility for plaque characterization.© 2018 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

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