Suppressing blood signal in myocardial T1ρ mapping at 3T through novel dark-blood adiabatic spin-lock preparations.

T1ρ-mapping is emerging as a promising, contrast-free alternative to LGE for assessment of myocardial viability. However, high blood T1ρ values can obfuscate endocardial scar. In this work, we propose a dark-blood adiabatic T1ρ preparation to suppress the blood signal and improve depiction of the blood-myocardium interface. A slice-selection gradient is added to an odd number of adiabatic full passage pulses to achieve blood inversion outside the imaging slab. Phantom results show that DBT1ρ yields unbiased estimation of T1ρ time. In vivo, thorough blood suppression is achieved for the trade-off against a moderate increase in DBT1ρ variance.