Ultrafast high-resolution multi-parametric brain MRI using 3D Echo Planar Time-resolved Imaging

Multi-parametric quantitative MRI has shown great potential to improve the sensitivity and specificity of clinical diagnosis, but suffers from impractical scan time especially at high spatial resolution, a major limiting factor that prevents it from common use. To address this long-standing challenge, we introduce a novel approach, termed 3D Echo Planar Time-resolved Imaging (3D-EPTI), which significantly increases the acceleration capacity of MRI sampling, and provides unprecedented acquisition efficiency for multi-parametric MRI. The high acceleration capability in 3D-EPTI is achieved by exploiting the spatiotemporal correlation of MRI data at multiple timescales through new encoding strategies within and between its efficient continuous data readouts. This has enabled robust and repeatable whole-brain multi-parametric mapping at high isotropic resolution within minutes. 3D-EPTI may greatly facilitate the clinical adoption of quantitative MRI and push towards the next-generation of brain examination with high efficacy and accuracy for improved diagnosis and longitudinal monitoring. Moreover, 3D-EPTI also offers a powerful tool for fast and repeatable submillimeter multi-parametric imaging that can be used to study detailed brain intra-cortical architectures for neuroscientific research.