Jamal Jon Derakhshan1,2, Sherif G. Nour1,2, Simi Paul2, Stephen R. Yutzy1,2, Jeffrey L. Sunshine2, Mark A. Griswold1,2, Jeffrey L. Duerk1,2
1Biomedical Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA; 2Radiology, University Hospitals of Cleveland, Cleveland, OH, USA
Thermal ablation treatment monitoring in real-time has been challenging in MRI. Some techniques require a pre-treatment image for baseline subtraction which can cause severe distortions in temperature/thermal dose maps if motion occurs between acquisition of the baseline and subsequent imaging assessment. In a study involving 26 laser ablations in the paraspinal and tongue base muscles of 11 pigs at 1.5 T, RE-TOSSI, a new SSFP based pulse sequence with 5 second temporal resolution, is shown to directly visualize growing thermal ablation lesions (as compared to post ablation contrast enhanced images) with high CNR and resolution without requiring a pre-treatment image.