Reducing Bright Streaking Artefacts in SMS Free-Breathing MoCo LGE Imaging Using a Novel Center-Out k-Space Reordering with Fat Saturation

Motivation: Simultaneous Multi-Slice (SMS) bSSFP shows promise for accelerated Free-Breathing Motion-Corrected Late Gadolinium Enhancement (FB-MoCo-LGE) protocol but can occasionally suffer from fat-related artefacts. Goal(s): To develop a fat suppressed SMS bSSFP FB-MoCo-LGE sequence. Approach: A novel block-based centric k-space reordering was developed to support RF phase cycling required by SMS bSSFP sequences. This reduces the time between the fat suppression pulse and the k space centre read out. This technique was tested in three patients. Results: The proposed approach resulted in substantial reduction of fat signal and imaging artefacts as opposed to the linear ordering without and with fat suppression pre-pulses. Impact: The novel block-based centric k-space reordering suitable for SMS bSSFP acquisitions enables efficient utilization of pre-pulses i.e. fat suppression. The presented work was done for LGE imaging; however, it can be applied in other cases that utilize SMS bSSFP sequences.