Reducing Artefacts in Inversion Recovery Prepared MRI Caused by Varying Heart Rate Through Real-Time Adaptation of the Inversion Time

Jedrzej Burakiewicz¹, Christoph Kolbitsch¹, Geoffrey David Charles-Edwards^1,2, Tobias Schaeffter¹

Rapid changes of heart rate create ghosting artefacts in ECG-triggered inversion recovery prepared MRI. A method is proposed to reduce the artefacts by real-time inversion time adaptation. The correction scheme was theoretically described, simulated, implemented on a scanner and tested using phantom and healthy volunteer brain scans. Variation in signal strength - the cause of artefacts - was reduced from 15% to 2.5%. This suggests a promising, easy to implement correction scheme increasing image quality by reducing artefacts.