Optimized diffusion-prepared 3D-MRF for rapid high-resolution whole-brain T1, T2, proton density, ADC and FA mapping

In this work, a diffusion preparation was implemented into the 3D spiral-projection MRF sequence to introduce additional diffusion weighting and enables whole-brain T1, T2, PD, ADC and FA mapping with 1-mm isotropic resolution within 10min. To maximize the diffusion signal and image-encoding efficiency, a diffusion-preparation without an amplitude stabilizer is employed, where robustness against phase variations is achieved using a combination of M1-compensated encoding, cardiac-gating, and an eddy-current compensating pre-pulse gradient. The MRF acquisition scheme and subspace reconstruction were also modified to enable effective data sharing across diffusion directions, which increase acceleration capability and improve mapping quality.