Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) fingerprinting

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10241174-B2
Application number	US-201414244001-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Apr 3, 2014
Priority date	Mar 18, 2011
Publication date	Mar 26, 2019
Grant date	Mar 26, 2019

Abstract

Apparatus, methods, and other embodiments associated with NMR fingerprinting are described. One example NMR apparatus includes an NMR logic configured to repetitively and variably sample a (k, t, E) space associated with an object to acquire a set of NMR signals. Members of the set of NMR signals are associated with different points in the (k, t, E) space. Sampling is performed with t and/or E varying in a non-constant way. The varying parameters may include flip angle, echo time, RF amplitude, and other parameters. The NMR apparatus may also include a signal logic configured to produce an NMR signal evolution from the NMR signals, a matching logic configured to compare a signal evolution to a known, simulated or predicted signal evolution, and a characterization logic configured to characterize a resonant species in the object as a result of the signal evolution comparisons.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method, comprising:
controlling a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) apparatus to apply radio frequency (RF) energy to a volume in an object in a series of variable sequence blocks, where a sequence block includes one or more excitation phases, one or more readout phases, and one or more waiting phases,
where the volume contains one or more resonant species,
where the RF energy applied during a sequence block is configured to cause the one or more resonant species in the volume to simultaneously produce individual NMR signals, and
where at least one member of the series of variable sequence blocks differs from at least one other member of the series of variable sequence blocks in at least N sequence block parameters, N being an integer greater than one;

controlling the NMR apparatus to acquire the simultaneously produced individual NMR signals;
controlling the NMR apparatus to compare the acquired NMR signals to one or more known signal evolutions, and
controlling the NMR apparatus to characterize at least one of the resonant species as a function of comparing the acquired NMR signals to the one or more known signal evolutions, where characterizing the resonant species comprises identifying one or more of, T1 relaxation associated with the resonant species, T2 relaxation associated with the resonant species, off-resonance relaxation associated with the resonant species, and diffusion weighted relaxation associated with the resonant species,
where the known signal evolutions include a signal selected from a set of signals described by:

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Assignees

• Univ Case Western Reserve

Inventors

• Griswold Mark
• Seiberlich Nicole
• Ma Dan
• Gulani Vikas

Classifications

• G01R33/50

  based on the determination of relaxation times {, e.g. T1 measurement by IR sequences; T2 measurement by multiple-echo sequences} · CPC title

• G01R33/543 Primary

  Control of the operation of the MR system, e.g. setting of acquisition parameters prior to or during MR data acquisition, dynamic shimming, use of one or more scout images for scan plane prescription (G01R33/546 takes precedence) · CPC title

• G01R33/56341

  Diffusion imaging · CPC title

• G01R33/4828

  Resolving the MR signals of different chemical species, e.g. water-fat imaging · CPC title

• G01R33/56 Primary

  Image enhancement or correction, e.g. subtraction or averaging techniques {, e.g. improvement of signal-to-noise ratio and resolution} · CPC title