• Jeong Hee Yoon, Mi Hye Yu, Won Chang, Jin-Young Park, Marcel Dominik Nickel, Yohan Son, Berthold Kiefer, and Jeong Min Lee.
• From the *Department of Radiology, Seoul National University Hospital, and †Seoul National University College of Medicine; ‡Department of Radiology, Kunkuk University School of Medicine, Seoul; §Department of Radiology, Dongnam Institute of Radiological and Medical Sciences, Busan, Republic of Korea; ∥Siemens Healthcare Gmbh, Erlangen, Germany; ¶Siemens Healthcare Korea; and #Department of Radiology and Institute of Radiation Medicine, Medical Research Center, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
• Invest Radiol. 2017 Oct 1; 52 (10): 596-604.

ObjectivesThe purpose of the study was to investigate the clinical feasibility of free-breathing dynamic T1-weighted imaging (T1WI) using Cartesian sampling, compressed sensing, and iterative reconstruction in gadoxetic acid-enhanced liver magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).Materials And MethodsThis retrospective study was approved by our institutional review board, and the requirement for informed consent was waived. A total of 51 patients at high risk of breath-holding failure underwent dynamic T1WI in a free-breathing manner using volumetric interpolated breath-hold (BH) examination with compressed sensing reconstruction (CS-VIBE) and hard gating. Timing, motion artifacts, and image quality were evaluated by 4 radiologists on a 4-point scale. For patients with low image quality scores (<3) on the late arterial phase, respiratory motion-resolved (extradimension [XD]) reconstruction was additionally performed and reviewed in the same manner. In addition, in 68.6% (35/51) patients who had previously undergone liver MRI, image quality and motion artifacts on dynamic phases using CS-VIBE were compared with previous BH-T1WIs.ResultsIn all patients, adequate arterial-phase timing was obtained at least once. Overall image quality of free-breathing T1WI was 3.30 ± 0.59 on precontrast and 2.68 ± 0.70, 2.93 ± 0.65, and 3.30 ± 0.49 on early arterial, late arterial, and portal venous phases, respectively. In 13 patients with lower than average image quality (<3) on the late arterial phase, motion-resolved reconstructed T1WI (XD-reconstructed CS-VIBE) significantly reduced motion artifacts (P < 0.002-0.021) and improved image quality (P < 0.0001-0.002). In comparison with previous BH-T1WI, CS-VIBE with hard gating or XD reconstruction showed less motion artifacts and better image quality on precontrast, arterial, and portal venous phases (P < 0.0001-0.013).ConclusionsVolumetric interpolated breath-hold examination with compressed sensing has the potential to provide consistent, motion-corrected free-breathing dynamic T1WI for liver MRI in patients at high risk of breath-holding failure.

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