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Optimizing lesion contrast without using contrast agents
Author(s) -
Bradley William G.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of magnetic resonance imaging
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.563
H-Index - 160
eISSN - 1522-2586
pISSN - 1053-1807
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1522-2586(199909)10:3<442::aid-jmri28>3.0.co;2-i
Subject(s) - fluid attenuated inversion recovery , lesion , weighting , contrast (vision) , gradient echo , fast spin echo , medicine , spin echo , radiology , nuclear medicine , computer science , magnetic resonance imaging , nuclear magnetic resonance , artificial intelligence , physics , pathology
The essence of optimizing lesion detection is increasing the signal‐to‐noise (S/N) for the lesion while decreasing the S/N of the background. Maneuvers which improve one aspect of lesion detection may have a deleterious effect on another. For example, thinner slices decrease partial volume averaging (important for detection of small lesions) but also decrease S/N. Attempts to increase S/N by lowering the bandwidth may increase the TE, decreasing the degree of T1‐weighting. Fast spin echo (FSE) generally offers the best T2‐weighting for detection of long T2 lesions. However, lesions with short T2s (due to magnetic susceptibility effects) are better detected with gradient echo techniques. Strategies which decrease background S/N include those based on chemical shift differences (ie, spectroscopic techniques like FatSat) and those based on differences in T1 (ie, inversion recovery [IR] techniques like STIR and FLAIR). J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 1999;10:442–449. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.