Fast and High-resolution Luminal Water Imaging in the Prostate Based on Echo Merging and k-t Undersampling with Reduced Refocusing Flip Angles

The clinical application of luminal water imaging (LWI) has been restricted by its long acquisition time. We present a high acceleration method based on T2 mapping using echo merging plus k-t undersampling with reduced flip angles (TEMPURA), which enables a fast acquisition in 2.8 min as well as a high-resolution acquisition in 5.4 min. Their performance was evaluated on 13 patients with biopsy-proven prostate cancer. Compared with the standard acquisition in 8.3 min, both the fast and high-resolution methods showed a high correlation in LWI measurements and consistent diagnostic performance in detecting malignant lesions.