The feasibility for in vivo navigation of untethered devices or robots is demonstrated with the control and tracking of a 1.5 mm diameter ferromagnetic bead in the carotid artery of a living swine using a clinical magnetic resonance imaging ͑MRI͒ platform. Navigation is achieved by inducing displacement forces from the three orthogonal slice selection and signal encoding gradient coils of a standard MRI system. The proposed method performs automatic tracking, propulsion, and computer control sequences at a sufficient rate to allow navigation along preplanned paths in the blood circulatory system. This technique expands the range of applications in MRI-based interventions.

A novel center-out 3D trajectory for sampling magnetic resonance data is presented. The trajectory set is based on a single Fermat spiral waveform, which is substantially undersampled in the center of k-space. Multiple trajectories are combined in a ''stacked cone'' configuration to give very uniform sampling throughout a ''hub,'' which is very efficient in terms of gradient performance and uniform trajectory spacing. The fermat looped, orthogonally encoded trajectories (FLORET) design produces less gradient-efficient trajectories near the poles, so multiple orthogonal hub designs are shown. These multihub designs oversample k-space twice with orthogonal trajectories, which gives unique properties but also doubles the minimum scan time for critical sampling of k-space. The trajectory is shown to be much more efficient than the conventional stack of cones trajectory, and has nearly the same signal-to-noise ratio efficiency (but twice the minimum scan time) as a stack of spirals trajectory. As a center-out trajectory, it provides a shorter minimum echo time than stack of spirals, and its spherical k-space coverage can dramatically reduce Gibbs ringing. Magn Reson Med 66:1303-1311,

Suppression of the fat signal in MRI is very important for many clinical applications. Multi-point water-fat separation methods, such as IDEAL (Iterative Decomposition of water and fat with Echo Asymmetry and Least-squares estimation), can robustly separate water and fat signal, but inevitably increase scan time, making separated images more easily affected by patient motions. PROPELLER (Periodically Rotated Overlapping ParallEL Lines with Enhanced Reconstruction) and Turboprop techniques offer an effective approach to correct for motion artifacts. By combining these techniques together, we demonstrate that the new TP-IDEAL method can provide reliable water-fat separation with robust motion correction. The Turboprop sequence was modified to acquire source images, and motion correction algorithms were adjusted to assure the registration between different echo images. Theoretical calculations were performed to predict the optimal shift and spacing of the gradient echoes. Phantom images were acquired, and results were compared with regular FSE-IDEAL. Both T1-and T2-weighted images of the human brain were used to demonstrate the ef- Key words: fat suppression; IDEAL; PROPELLER; TurboporpRobust water-fat separation is very important in many clinical applications, and can improve clinical diagnosis in applications for which the bright fat signal could otherwise obscure underlying pathology. For example, when T1-shortening contrast agents such as gadolinium are used to visualize lesions in T1-weighted imaging, or in T2-weigthed imaging where the edema or tumors appear bright, it is very important to suppress the fat signal effectively.Various techniques have been proposed to suppress the fat signal. One can use RF pulses to selectively excite the water signal or suppress the fat signal (1-3), or use a short TI recovery (STIR) technique (4 -6) to null the fat signal. However, these techniques are usually sensitive to B0 or B1 field inhomogeneities, and sometimes fail to provide reliable separation (suppression) in clinical applications. Multi-point water-fat separation methods (7-15) exploit the difference in chemical shifts between water and fat to separate them, and are less affected by field inhomogeneities.Source images from multi-point water-fat separation techniques can be processed differently. Dixon's method (7) and its variations (8 -11,14) have been widely used. IDEAL (Iterative Decomposition of water and fat with Echo Asymmetry and Least-squares estimation) (15) is a recently proposed multi-point water fat separation technique. Combined with a region-growing algorithm (16), IDEAL has great robustness and SNR efficiency, making it suitable for many clinical applications (15,17,18). However, the requirement of acquiring multiple images may increase total scan time and make IDEAL images more prone to motion artifacts. Variations of IDEAL techniques have been proposed (19 -23) to reduce scan time and motion artifacts, however the remaining artifacts may still be a problem.PROPELLER (Periodically Rotated Overlapp...

Split-blade diffusion-weighted periodically rotated overlapping parallel lines with enhanced reconstruction (DW-PROPELLER) was proposed to address the issues associated with diffusion-weighted echo planar imaging such as geometric distortion and difficulty in high-resolution imaging. The major drawbacks with DW-PROPELLER are its high SAR (especially at 3T) and violation of the Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill condition, which leads to a long scan time and narrow blade. Parallel imaging can reduce scan time and increase blade width; however, it is very challenging to apply standard k-spacebased techniques such as GeneRalized Autocalibrating Partially Parallel Acquisitions (GRAPPA) to split-blade DW-PRO-PELLER due to its narrow blade. In this work, a new calibration scheme is proposed for k-space-based parallel imaging method without the need of additional calibration data, which results in a wider, more stable blade. The in vivo results show that this technique is very promising. Magn Reson Med 65:638-644,

The possibility of automatically navigating untethered microdevices or future nanorobots to conduct target endovascular interventions has been demonstrated by our group with the computer-controlled displacement of a magnetic sphere along a pre-planned path inside the carotid artery of a living swine. However, although the feasibility of propelling, tracking and performing real-time closed-loop control of an untethered ferromagnetic object inside a living animal model with a relatively close similarity to human anatomical conditions has been validated using a standard clinical Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) system, little information has been published so far concerning the medical and technical protocol used. In fact, such a protocol developed within technological and physiological constraints was a key element in the success of the experiment. More precisely, special software modules were developed within the MRI software environment to offer an effective tool for experimenters interested in conducting such novel interventions. These additional software modules were also designed to assist an interventional radiologist in all critical real-time aspects that are executed at a speed beyond human capability, and include tracking, propulsion, event timing and closed-loop position control. These real-time tasks were necessary to avoid a loss of navigation control that could result in serious injury to the patient. Here, additional simulation and experimental results for microdevices designed to be targeted more towards the microvasculature have also been considered in the identification, validation and description of a specific sequence of events defining a new computer-assisted interventional protocol that provides the framework for future target interventions conducted in humans.

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Purpose Diffusion contrast in diffusion-weighted steady state free precession MRI is generated through the constructive addition of signal from many coherence pathways. Motion-induced phase causes destructive interference which results in loss of signal magnitude and diffusion contrast. In this work, a 3D navigator-based real-time correction of the rigid-body-motion-induced phase errors is developed for diffusion-weighted steady state free precession MRI. Methods The efficacy of the real-time prospective correction method in preserving phase coherence of the steady-state is tested in 3D phantom experiments and 3D scans of healthy human subjects. Results In nearly all experiments, the signal magnitude in images obtained with proposed prospective correction was higher than the signal magnitude in images obtained with no correction. In the human subjects the mean magnitude signal in the data was up to 30 percent higher with prospective motion correction than without. Prospective correction never resulted in a decrease in mean signal magnitude in either the data or in the images. Conclusions The proposed prospective motion correction method is shown to preserve the phase coherence of the steady state in diffusion-weighted steady state free precession MRI, thus mitigating signal magnitude losses that would confound the desired diffusion contrast.

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