Self-navigated free-breathing ZTE lung imaging

Here we propose a self-navigated technique, based on the extraction of respiratory motion estimates using interleaved spiral phyllotaxis trajectories in 3D radial zero echo time (ZTE) acquisitions. These are particularly well-suited to capture the short T2* signal, characteristic of lung parenchyma, and have high acquisition efficiency allowing to generate fast temporal resolution navigators. The self-navigation technique worked robustly for different respiratory patterns and on 1.5T and 3.0T fields strengths, obtaining high quality images comparable to the ones obtained with bellows-gating.