Asymmetric gradient echoes were successfully implemented for highly undersampled radial trajectories. The resulting temporal gain offers full velocity compensation for real-time phase-contrast flow MRI which minimizes false-positive contributions from complex flow and further enhances the temporal resolution compared with acquisitions with symmetric echoes.

This novel model-based reconstruction technique may become a new tool for clinical flow MRI in real time. Magn Reson Med 77:1082-1093, 2017. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

The proposed method does not require additional reference measurements and separately corrects for phase errors induced by eddy currents, while retaining the residual phase of the object which may carry physiologic information.

Quantitative parameter mapping in MRI is typically performed as a two-step procedure where serial imaging is followed by pixelwise model fitting. In contrast, model-based reconstructions directly reconstruct parameter maps from raw data without explicit image reconstruction. Here, we propose a method that determines T1 maps directly from multi-channel raw data as obtained by a single-shot inversion-recovery radial FLASH acquisition with a Golden Angle view order. Joint reconstruction of a T1, spin-density and flip-angle map is formulated as a nonlinear inverse problem and solved by the iteratively regularized Gauss-Newton method. Coil sensitivity profiles are determined from the same data in a preparatory step of the reconstruction. Validations included numerical simulations, in vitro MRI studies of an experimental T1 phantom, and in vivo studies of brain and abdomen of healthy subjects at a field strength of 3 T. The results obtained for a numerical and experimental phantom demonstrated excellent accuracy and precision of model-based T1 mapping. In vivo studies allowed for high-resolution T1 mapping of human brain (0.5-0.75 mm in-plane, 4 mm section thickness) and liver (1.0 mm, 5 mm section) within 3.6-5 s. In conclusion, the proposed method for model-based T1 mapping may become an alternative to two-step techniques, which rely on model fitting after serial image reconstruction. More extensive clinical trials now require accelerated computation and online implementation of the algorithm.