Estimation of Spatiotemporal Sensitivity Using Band-limited Signals with No Additional Acquisitions for k–t Parallel Imaging

PURPOSE: Dynamic MR techniques, such as cardiac cine imaging, benefit from shorter acquisition times. The goal of the present study was to develop a method that achieves short acquisition times, while maintaining a cost-effective reconstruction, for dynamic MRI. k – t sensitivity encoding (SENSE) was identified as the base method to be enhanced meeting these two requirements. METHODS: The proposed method achieves a reduction in acquisition time by estimating the spatiotemporal (x – f) sensitivity without requiring the acquisition of the alias-free signals, typical of the k – t SENSE technique. The cost-effective reconstruction, in turn, is achieved by a computationally efficient estimation of the x – f sensitivity from the band-limited signals of the aliased inputs. Such band-limited signals are suitable for sensitivity estimation because the strongly aliased signals have been removed. RESULTS: For the same reduction factor 4, the net reduction factor 4 for the proposed method was significantly higher than the factor 2.29 achieved by k – t SENSE. The processing time is reduced from 4.1 s for k – t SENSE to 1.7 s for the proposed method. The image quality obtained using the proposed method proved to be superior (mean squared error [MSE] ± standard deviation [SD] = 6.85 ± 2.73) compared to the k – t SENSE case (MSE ± SD = 12.73 ± 3.60) for the vertical long-axis (VLA) view, as well as other views. CONCLUSION: In the present study, k – t SENSE was identified as a suitable base method to be improved achieving both short acquisition times and a cost-effective reconstruction. To enhance these characteristics of base method, a novel implementation is proposed, estimating the x – f sensitivity without the need for an explicit scan of the reference signals. Experimental results showed that the acquisition, computational times and image quality for the proposed method were improved compared to the standard k – t SENSE method.