A pharmacokinetic model for hyperpolarized C-pyruvate MRI when using metabolite-specific bSSFP sequences.

Purpose: Metabolite-specific balanced SSFP (MS-bSSFP) sequences are increasingly used in hyperpolarized [1-C]Pyruvate (HP C) MRI studies as they improve SNR by refocusing the magnetization each TR. Currently, pharmacokinetic models used to fit conversion rate constants, k and k, and rate constant maps do not account for differences in the signal evolution of MS-bSSFP acquisitions.

Methods: In this work, a flexible MS-bSSFP model was built that can be used to fit conversion rate constants for these experiments.