Fully Steady-State Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer (CEST) imaging for Amide Proton Transfer (APT) at 3T MRI

A steady-state chemical exchange saturation transfer (SS-CEST) MRI, which is based on the standard macromolecule transfer (MT) imaging method, has been developed for fast scanning ^1,2. In this study, we proposed a SS-CEST imaging combined with steady-state free precession (SSFP) which is so-called fully SS-CEST imaging. The fully SS-CEST method was compared with a SS-CEST combined with spoiled gradient echo (SPGR) through numerical simulations and MRI experiments. The results show that the fully SS-CEST method can provide higher amide proton transfer (APT) contrast than the SS-CEST with SGPR.