Karen Mooney1, John P. Mugler III2, Gordon D. Cates Jr. 1, 2, W. A. Tobias1, G. Wilson Miller2
1Physics, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, United States; 2Radiology, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
The sensitivity of hyperpolarized helium to diffusion provides an opportunity to generate diffusion weighting based on asymmetric signal attenuation in a balanced SSFP sequence, by placing diffusion-sensitizing gradients in selected TR windows. We present a pulse sequence designed to take advantage of this effect, and use it make accurate measurements of the helium diffusion coefficient at very short timescales.