Diffusion-weighted double-echo magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF)

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11340325-B2
Application number	US-201916404657-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 6, 2019
Priority date	Apr 21, 2014
Publication date	May 24, 2022
Grant date	May 24, 2022

Abstract

Apparatus, methods, and other embodiments associated with NMR fingerprinting are described. One example NMR apparatus includes an NMR logic that repetitively and variably samples a (k, t, E) space associated with an object to acquire a set of NMR signals that 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. Sampling is performed in response to a diffusion-weighted double-echo pulse sequence. Sampling acquires transient-state signals of the double-echo sequence. The NMR apparatus may also include a signal logic that produces an NMR signal evolution from the NMR signals, and a characterization logic that characterizes a resonant species in the object as a result of comparing acquired signals to reference signals.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method, comprising:
accessing a set of known signal evolutions;
accessing an acquired nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signal, where the acquired NMR signal was produced by a volume that contains one or more resonant species that simultaneously produced individual NMR signals in response to a magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) data acquisition that includes a series of variable sequence blocks and wherein the variable sequence blocks includes acquisition blocks;
determining a signal evolution from the acquired NMR signal;
finding a selected entry in the set of known signal evolutions that matches the signal evolution;
retrieving, from stored MR parameters associated with the selected entry, one or more quantitative MR parameter values;
producing, from the quantitative values, quantitative maps associated with the one or more quantitative MR parameter values;
wherein the set of known signal evolutions includes a plurality of signals selected from a set of signals described by:

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Assignees

• Univ Case Western Reserve

Inventors

• Griswold Mark
• Gulani Vikas
• Ma Dan
• Jiang Yun
• Wright Katherine

Classifications

• G01R33/56341

  Diffusion imaging · CPC title

• G01R33/5608 Primary

  Data processing and visualization specially adapted for MR, e.g. for feature analysis and pattern recognition on the basis of measured MR data, segmentation of measured MR data, edge contour detection on the basis of measured MR data, for enhancing measured MR data in terms of signal-to-noise ratio by means of noise filtering or apodization, for enhancing measured MR data in terms of resolution by means for deblurring, windowing, zero filling, or generation of gray-scaled images, colour-coded images or images displaying vectors instead of pixels (image data processing or generation, in general G06T) · CPC title

• G01R33/4828

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