Abstract #1303

Matre X, Halawani C, Darrasse L, Durand E, Girard O, De Rochefort L

A four-channel RF-coil array was designed to perform accelerated hyperpolarized helium-3 MRI in the human lung with a 0.1 T whole-body MRI unit. Initial evaluation was based on a phantom replica of a human-lung cross-section, allowing comparison between numerical simulations and actually-acquired experimental data that address specific issues with hyperpolarized substances. First accelerated imaging acquisitions were achieved. They exhibited fairly good SNR both in vitro and in vivo. Phantom images with scan time reduction have been reconstructed while keeping same SNR by imposing constant the Fourier-domain filtering effect inherent to prepared magnetization. Centrically-reordered scans led to negligible reconstruction artifacts.