Flexible longitudinal magnetization contrast in spectrally overlapped 3D-MSI metal artifact reduction sequences: Technical considerations and clinical impact.

Purpose: It has previously been demonstrated that increased overlap of spectral bins in three-dimensional multispectral imaging techniques (3D-MSI) can aid in reducing residual artifacts near metal implants. However, increasing spectral overlap also necessitates consideration of saturation effects for species with long T1 values. Here, an interleaved spectral bin acquisition strategy is presented for overlapping 3D-MSI that allows for flexible choice of repetition times while simultaneously addressing these cross talk concerns.

Methods: A phantom imaging experiment is used to illustrate the amplified effect of cross talk on 3D-MSI acquisitions. A methodological approach to address cross talk across a variety of prescribed repetition times is then described. Using the presented principles, a clinical subject with a total hip replacement was imaged to generate T1, proton density, and short-tau inversion recovery contrasts. In addition, a fracture instrumentation case was imaged pre- and postcontrast using T1-weighted spectrally overlapped 3D-MSI.

Results: Phantom results demonstrate that conventional spectral interleaving approaches can generate unwanted signal characteristics in heavily overlapped 3D-MSI. Clinical images using the presented methods successfully demonstrate T1, proton density, and inversion recovery image contrasts using heavily overlapped 3D-MSI.

Conclusions: Through automated management of spectral bin distributions across multiple interleaves, a variety of longitudinal magnetization contrasts can efficiently be acquired without any clinically relevant cross-talk impact using heavily overlapped 3D-MSI.