Sci‐PM Thurs ‐ 04: A comparative study between multi‐station and moving‐table methods with steady‐state free precession

Large field‐of‐view (FOV) imaging techniques, such as the multi‐station and moving‐table techniques, are necessary to image systemic diseases such as peripheral vascular disease and metastases. In the multi‐station technique, the full k‐space is acquired for each station, i.e., at each local FOV, and the images are combined offline. For the moving‐table method, the scanner bed is continuously moved through the local FOV during a single acquisition, creating a single large FOV image. Steady‐state free precession is a pulse sequence capable of rapid imagedata acquisition. This study compares large FOV images of healthy volunteers using both the moving‐table method and the multi‐station technique using an SSFP pulse sequence. In the multi‐station technique, six 32 s‐acquisition's are required to cover the large FOV. For the moving table method, the hybrid k‐space is collected during a single 150 s‐scan, creating a seamless large FOV image. Although the moving‐table method is more time‐efficient than the multi‐station technique, image quality is sacrificed. This quality reduction is due to non‐steady‐state conditions caused by table motion and because the k‐space data is partially sampled. By optimizing this moving‐table SSFP technique and integrating it with a tissue suppression algorithm, it may be possible to perform non‐contrast enhanced MR angiograms of the entire peripheral vasculature. Thus, the technique could provide a non‐invasive and time‐efficient method for producing seamless large FOV images for diagnosis of systemic diseases.