Fast Chemical Exchange Saturation Transfer (CEST) Imaging with Variably-accelerated Sensitivity Encoding (vSENSE).

CEST imaging has numerous applications, but its widespread clinical use is hampered by relatively long acquisition times. Here, a novel variably-accelerated sensitivity encoding (vSENSE) method is proposed that provides faster CEST acquisitions than conventional SENSE. The vSENSE approach undersamples k-space variably for images acquired at different saturation frequencies to maximize acquisition speed. vSENSE was validated in a phantom and in 8 patients with brain tumors studied at 3T. The vSENSE method provided a 4-fold acceleration, compared to conventional SENSE which permitted only a 2-fold acceleration, with both compared to a full k-space reconstruction.