A Comparison of Three CEST Imaging Methods

Zhongliang Zu¹, Ke Li¹, Daniel Frank Gochberg¹

Three CEST imaging methods including continuous-wave, pulsed-, and spoiled gradient recalled CEST are numerically optimized and compared using simulations and a creatine/agarose tissue phantom. We found that the average irradiation power is a more meaningful sequence metric than is the average irradiation field; We also found that the SPGR-CEST provides an alternative to the EPI based CW- and pulsed-CEST imaging methods that avoids the artifacts inherent to multi-echo acquisitions, though at the cost of lower CNR.