Fat-Water MR Elastography with Distributed Encoding for Accelerated Imaging of Brain and Skull Displacement

Motivation: There exists a need for a noninvasive method capable of capturing skull-brain dynamics in vivo to provide accurate input parameters for computational models of traumatic brain injury. Goal(s): We aimed to develop an accelerated fat-water imaging technique to quantify relative skull-brain displacement using magnetic resonance elastography (MRE). Approach: Elastography with distributed generalized encoding was used to accelerate our previously developed fat-water MRE sequence to enable more extensive data collection in a single imaging session. Results: This technique was able to simultaneously image skull and brain displacement with sufficient harmonic wave displacement to capture brain mechanical properties and bulk motion comparable to previous studies. Impact: Quantifying relative skull-brain motion with the proposed sequence will help researchers define the transfer of skull-to-brain force transmission for ultimately determining regional variation in tissue displacement throughout the brain and the influence of different directions and frequencies of applied motion.