Development and Clinical Integration of an Automated Prostate MR Fingerprinting Pipeline

Motivation: MR Fingerprinting (MRF) has demonstrated improved characterization of prostatic lesions and shows promise in reducing unnecessary biopsies for MRI-negative patients. Goal(s): To implement a clinical prostate MRF pipeline with real-time reconstruction and tissue parameter mapping capabilities. Approach: We developed and deployed a fully automated prostate MRF pipeline across three clinical 3 T scanners. The implementation integrates acquisition sequence programming, image reconstruction, and parameter mapping using the mrftools framework. Results: Initial testing in ten patients demonstrates the stability of the pipeline with the measured tissue parameters within the expected range. Impact: MR Fingerprinting (MRF) has demonstrated improved characterization of prostatic lesions. The successful clinical implementation of prostate MRF enables routine quantitative prostate tissue properties mapping.