Joint myocardial T₁ and T₂ mapping using a combination of saturation recovery and T₂-preparation

Purpose: To develop a heart-rate independent breath-held joint T₁–T₂ mapping sequence for accurate simultaneous estimation of coregistered myocardial T₁ and T₂ maps. Methods: A novel preparation scheme combining both a saturation pulse and T₂-preparation in a single R–R interval is introduced. The time between these two pulses, as well as the duration of the T₂-preparation is varied in each heartbeat, acquiring images with different T₁ and T₂ weightings, and no magnetization dependence on previous images. Inherently coregistered T₁ and T₂ maps are calculated from these images. Phantom imaging is performed to compare the proposed maps with spin echo references. In vivo imaging is performed in ten subjects, comparing the accuracy and precision of the proposed technique to existing myocardial T₁ and T₂ mapping sequences of the same duration. Results: Phantom experiments show that the proposed technique provides accurate quantification of T₁ and T₂ values over a wide-range (T₁: 260 ms to 1460 ms, T₂: 40 ms to 200 ms). In vivo imaging shows that the proposed sequence quantifies T₁ and T₂ values similar to a saturation-based T₁ mapping and a conventional breath-hold T₂ mapping sequence, respectively. Conclusion: The proposed sequence allows joint estimation of accurate and coregistered quantitative myocardial T₁ and T₂ maps in a single breath-hold. Magn Reson Med 76:888–896, 2016.