Multi-Slice GRE-MOLLI at 3T using Denoising with Low-Rank and Sparsity Constraints

Modified Look-Locker inversion recovery (MOLLI) uses bSSFP readout due to its high SNR, however, bSSFP is sensitive to off-resonance effects which result in banding artifacts. Recently, GRE has been proposed as an alternative readout for MOLLI, however, the low SNR efficiency of GRE-MOLLI is still a major problem. In this work, we propose to use a denoising reconstruction framework with low-rank and sparsity constraints to improve the low SNR of GRE-MOLLI. The proposed denoising method improved the low SNR of GRE-MOLLI, and multi-slice GRE-MOLLI is feasible for artifact-free T₁ mapping with wider spatial coverage at high magnetic fields ($$$\geq 3T$$$).