Dynamic Imaging of Speech and Swallowing with MRI

Dynamic imaging with Mill holds great promise for visualizing soft tissue structures in the oropharyngeal region during speech and swallowing studies. However, MRI suffers from historically slow acquisition speed and sensitivity to significant magnetic susceptibility differences in this region. In this work, we describe our efforts in creating high temporal resolution, serial acquisitions of the muscles of the oropharyngeal region. We describe our imaging approach that leads to acquisition rates of up to 21 frames per second. Additionally, we compare the serial acquisition scheme to gated acquisitions that suffer from temporal blur due to limited repeatability of the dynamic action.