Michael Lustig
MRI is excellent for pediatric diagnosis, offering superb contrast, without risk to a population particularly susceptible to cancer from ionizing radiation of computed tomography. However, MRI’s impact in children is limited by technical demands of imaging small, fast moving structures, long exams that limit access, result in motion artifacts, and most often require anesthesia with attendant risk. This talk will review our decade long work to mitigate these challenges through development of dedicated pediatric receiver arrays, fast compressed sensing and parallel imaging accelerated exams, non-rigid motion correction, dynamic imaging and multi-contrast MRI with rapid computation — all of which resulted in significant reduction in the incidence, depth, and duration of anesthesia. Finally, the talk will review the remaining challenges and offer possible solutions through existing, emerging and future technologies including machine learning, 3D dynamic non-Cartesian MRI with massive computation, automated scanning, rapid silent scanning and dedicated pediatric scanners that could ultimately eliminate completely the need for anesthesia in pediatric MRI.