Feasibility and Preliminary Evaluation of Breath Hold and Free Breathing Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping of the Liver

Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) is a promising non-invasive technique for quantification of liver iron concentration. Abdominal QSM typically requires a breath-hold acquisition since respiration induces liver motion, which leads to blurring artifacts. However, some patients have trouble even with a short breath-hold, which necessitates development of free-breathing approaches. In this work, we report initial results on the feasibility of using the modified “butterfly” navigator approach in multi-echo imaging in conjunction with compressed sensing reconstruction to enable free-breathing liver QSM.