Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
1522-2594
abstract
Purpose: To demonstrate three-dimensional (3D) multiple b-value diffusion-weighted (DW) MRI of hyperpolarized 3He gas for whole lung morphometry with compressed sensing (CS). Methods: A fully-sampled, two b-value, 3D hyperpolarized 3He DW-MRI dataset was acquired from the lungs of a healthy volunteer and retrospectively undersampled in the ky and kz phase-encoding directions for CS simulations. Optimal k-space undersampling patterns were determined by minimizing the mean absolute error between reconstructed and fully-sampled 3He apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps. Prospective three-fold, undersampled, 3D multiple b-value 3He DW-MRI datasets were acquired from five healthy volunteers and one chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patient, and the mean values of maps of ADC and mean alveolar dimension (LmD) were validated against two-dimensional (2D) and 3D fully-sampled 3He DW-MRI experiments. Results: Reconstructed undersampled datasets showed no visual artifacts and good preservation of the main image features and quantitative information. A good agreement between fully-sampled and prospective undersampled datasets was found, with a mean difference of +3.4% and +5.1% observed in mean global ADC and LmD values, respectively. These differences were within the standard deviation range and consistent with values reported from healthy and COPD lungs. Conclusions: Accelerated CS acquisition has facilitated 3D multiple b-value 3He DW-MRI scans in a single breath-hold, enabling whole lung morphometry mapping.