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Effectiveness of fat suppression using a water-selective binomial-pulse excitation in chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) magnetic resonance imaging

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to characterize the individual contribution of multiple fat peaks to the measured chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) signal when using water-selective binomial-pulse excitation and to determine the effects of multiple fat peaks in the presence of B0 inhomogeneity.

Methods

The excitation profiles of multiple binomial pulses were simulated. A CEST sequence with binomial-pulse excitation and modified point-resolved spectroscopy localization was then applied to the in vivo lumbar spinal vertebrae to determine the signal contributions of three distinct groups of lipid resonances. These confounding signal contributions were measured as a function of the irradiation frequency offset to determine the effect of the multi-peak nature of the fat signal on CEST imaging of exchange sites (at 1.0, 2.0 and 3.5 ppm) and robustness in the presence of B0 inhomogeneity.

Results

Numerical simulations and in vivo experiments showed that water excitation (WE) using a 1-3-3-1 (WE-4) pulse provided the broadest signal suppression, which provided partial robustness against B0 inhomogeneity effects. Confounding fat signal contributions to the CEST contrasts at 1.0, 2.0 and 3.5 ppm were unavoidable due to the multi-peak nature of the fat signal. However, these CEST sites only suffer from small lipid artifacts with ∆B0 spanning roughly from  − 50 to 50 Hz. Especially for the CEST site at 3.5 ppm, the lipid artifacts are smaller than 1% with ∆B0 in this range.

Conclusion

In WE-4-based CEST magnetic resonance imaging, B0 inhomogeneity is the limiting factor for fat suppression. The CEST sites at 1.0, 2.0 ppm and 3.5 ppm unavoidably suffer from lipid artifacts. However, when the ∆B0 is confined to a limited range, these CEST sites are only affected by small lipid artifacts, which may be ignorable in some cases of clinical applications.

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Abbreviations

CEST:

Chemical exchange saturation transfer

B 0 :

Main magnetic field

∆B 0 :

Main field inhomogeneity

WE:

Water-selective excitation

WE-2:

Water-selective excitation using the 1-1 pulse

WE-3:

Water-selective excitation using the 1-2-1 pulse

WE-4:

Water-selective excitation using the 1-3-3-1 pulse

PRESS:

Point-resolved spectroscopy

mPRESS:

Modified point-resolved spectroscopy

MTRasym :

Asymmetric magnetic transfer ratio

VOI:

Volume of interest

PDFF:

Proton‐density fat fraction

HISTO:

Single-voxel high-speed T2-corrected multiple-echo 1H-MRS acquisition

NCO:

Numerically controlled oscillator

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant Number 81271533]; the Social Science Foundation of China [Grant Number 15ZDB016]; and National Institutes of Health [Grant Numbers R01CA184693, R01EB017767].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, School of Physics and Electronic Science, East China Normal University, 3663 North Zhongshan Road, Shanghai, 200062, China

    Yu Zhao, Zhichao Wang & Jianqi Li

  2. Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, Vanderbilt University, 1161 21st Ave. S, Medical Center North AAA-3112, Nashville, TN, 37232-2310, USA

    Yu Zhao, Zhongliang Zu & Daniel F. Gochberg

  3. Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford, Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Zhenzhi Liu

  4. Image Processing Center, School of Astronautics, Beihang University, Beijing, China

    Bin Guo

  5. MR Scientific Marketing, Siemens Healthineers, Shanghai, China

    Xu Yan

Authors
  1. Yu Zhao
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  2. Zhongliang Zu
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  4. Zhenzhi Liu
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  5. Bin Guo
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  6. Xu Yan
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  7. Daniel F. Gochberg
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  8. Jianqi Li
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Contributions

YZ was responsible for study conception and design, analysis and interpretation of data and drafting of the manuscript. ZZ was responsible for interpretation of data and critical revision. ZW was responsible for acquisition of data. ZL and BG was responsible critical revision. DFG and JL were responsible for study conception and design and critical review.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Daniel F. Gochberg or Jianqi Li.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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The study was approved by the University Committee on Human Research Protection of East China Normal University.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Zhao, Y., Zu, Z., Wang, Z. et al. Effectiveness of fat suppression using a water-selective binomial-pulse excitation in chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) magnetic resonance imaging. Magn Reson Mater Phy 33, 809–818 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-020-00851-7

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