Instantaneous Abdominal T2* Mapping via Single-Shot MOLED Under Free-Breathing: A Preliminary Study of Hepatic Glycometabolism Imaging.

Journal: Magnetic resonance in medicine
Published Date: Dec 31, 2025

Abstract

PURPOSE: To propose a gradient-echo multiple overlapping-echo detachment (GRE-MOLED) method for rapid abdominal T2* mapping, and to systematically validate its efficacy in non-invasive monitoring of dynamic hepatic glycometabolism. METHODS: The GRE-MOLED sequence was optimized to achieve ultrafast abdominal T2* mapping under free-breathing without respiratory gating, the scan time per slice was only 60 ms. A deep neural network architecture was developed and trained on synthetic data generated through Bloch equation simulations to achieve direct end-to-end reconstruction of T2* maps from GRE-MOLED images. The proposed method was evaluated through numerical abdomen experiments, water phantom experiments, test-retest experiments in healthy volunteers, and dynamic glycometabolic experiments. RESULTS: Quantitative analyses revealed excellent agreement between the results of our method and reference method. Numerical abdomen experiment achieved mean structural similarity index (SSIM) of 0.9818 and voxel-wise R2 = 0.9163. Water phantom experiments demonstrated high linear correlation (R2 = 0.9992) with a Bland-Altman bias of 0.2686 ms (95% limits of agreement: -1.1048 to 1.6420 ms). Test-retest analysis showed intra-subject coefficient of variation (CV) below 7% across multiple organs. Dynamic glycometabolism mapping successfully captured postprandial hepatic T2* fluctuations with temporal resolution outperforming conventional breath-holding methods. CONCLUSION: The GRE-MOLED method enables robust abdominal T2* mapping under free-breathing, demonstrating obvious potential for non-invasive assessment of hepatic glycometabolic dynamics. Validation across numerical simulations, water phantom and in vivo experiments confirm technical reliability and high reproducibility.

Authors

  • Ping Huang
    Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA.
  • Chenyang Dai
    Department of Thoracic Surgery, Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
  • Qinqin Yang
    Institute of Laser and Optoelectronics Technology, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory for Photonics Technology, Key Laboratory of OptoElectronic Science and Technology for Medicine of Ministry of Education, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, China.
  • Liuhong Zhu
    Department of Radiology, Zhongshan Hospital (Xiamen), Fudan University, Xiamen, China.
  • Jianjun Zhou
    Beijing Key Laboratory of Energy Conversion and Storage Materials, College of Chemistry, Beijing Normal University Xinjiekouwai Street No. 19 Beijing 100875 P. R. China [email protected].
  • Congbo Cai
    Department of Electronic Science, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Plasma and Magnetic Resonance, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China.
  • Shuhui Cai
    Department of Electronic Science, Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Plasma and Magnetic Resonance, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China.

Keywords

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