Data acquisition strategies to mitigate cardiac-induced noise in quantitative R2* maps of the brain

Cardiac pulsation enhances the noise level in MR images of the brain and reduces the sensitivity of the data in studies of brain disease. We propose two data acquisition strategies that mitigate cardiac-induced noise in quantitative brain maps of the MRI parameter R2*. The first strategy sets the number of samples at each k-space location according to the local level of cardiac-induced noise. The second strategy adjusts data acquisition in real-time to acquire the data most sensitive to cardiac-induced noise during the diastolic period of the cardiac cycle.