Q&A with Carole Lazarus, Alexandre Vignaud, and Philippe Ciuciu

The June 2019 MRM Editor’s Pick interview is with Carole Lazarus, Alexandre Vignaud, and Philippe Ciuciu from NeuroSpin and Université Paris‐Saclay. Their paper is titled “SPARKLING: variable-density k-space filling curves for accelerated T2*-weighted MRI”. Click on the video below to watch their audioslides and our interview with them.

For those who would like to get a quick overview of our discussion, below is an annotation of the interview. Clicking on the timestamp will take you to the exact video location where the topic is discussed.

00:54 - Audioslides: Carole Lazarus presents a 5 minute overview of their paper. SPARKLING (Spreading Projection Algorithm for Rapid K-space samplING) is an optimization scheme for variable-density k-space acquisitions of non-Cartesian trajectories, which the authors applied to accelerate T2*-weighted images.

05:57 - The authors talk about how they were surprised that the complicated k-space trajectories generated by the algorithm performed correctly by their gradient system, and didn’t generate large peripheral nerve stimulations.

09:05 The authors expand on the potential applications for this technique, such as for high-resolution 3D susceptibility-weighted imaging, and high-resolution fMRI by using single-shot SPARKLING.