Early Experience of Functional Fetal Lung Imaging using Low Field MRI

Low field MRI for fetal imaging has the potential to be a powerful tool for prenatal diagnosis, with a favourable combination of scope for a larger bore (adding comfort and reducing claustrophobia), and lower SAR, susceptibility effects and receiver coil properties. We performed functional scans of the fetal lung to demonstrate the high image quality that can be acquired. The quantitative values of the fetal lungs (IVIM parameters, T1, T2*) calculated from the low field images match the expected values from higher field strengths reported in the literature.