CONTINUOUS RADIAL DATA-ACQUISITION FOR DYNAMIC MRI

Since image acquisition times in MRI have been reduced considerably ov er recent years, several new important application areas of MRI have a ppeared. In addition to pure static anatomic information, the evolutio n of a dynamic process may be visualized by a sequence of temporal sna pshots of the process acquired within a short time period. This makes applications like interactive or interventional MRI as well as the acq uisition of additional functional information feasible. For high tempo ral resolution, all these applications require a quasi real-time image acquisition during the time the interaction or dynamic process evolve s. We present an approach to realtime imaging using a continuous radia l acquisition scheme. The intrinsic advantages of radial or projection reconstruction (PR) techniques are used to minimize motion-related im age distortions. Modifications of the acquisition scheme as well as de dicated reconstruction techniques are used to further reduce the tempo ral blurring due to the finite acquisition time of one entire data set in our approach. So far we have used this technique for the visualiza tion of active joint motion.