Premium
Fluid‐attenuated inversion‐recovery SSFP imaging
Author(s) -
Bangerter Neal K.,
Hargreaves Brian A.,
Gold Garry E.,
Stucker Daniel T.,
Nishimura Dwight G.
Publication year - 2006
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/jmri.20743
Subject(s) - fluid attenuated inversion recovery , steady state free precession imaging , neuroimaging , nuclear medicine , cerebrospinal fluid , nuclear magnetic resonance , flip angle , magnetic resonance imaging , white matter , medicine , physics , radiology , pathology , psychiatry
Purpose To describe and evaluate a fast, fluid‐suppressed 2D multislice steady‐state free precession (SSFP) neuroimaging sequence. Materials and Methods We developed a fast fluid‐attenuated inversion‐recovery SSFP sequence for use in neuroimaging. The inversion time (TI) was optimized to yield good cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) suppression while conserving white matter (WM)/lesion contrast across a broad range of flip angles. Multiple SSFP acquisitions were combined using the sum‐of‐squares (SOS) method to maximize SNR efficiency while minimizing SSFP banding artifacts. We compared our fluid‐attenuated inversion‐recovery (FLAIR) SSFP sequence with FLAIR fast spin‐echo (FSE) in both normal subjects and a volunteer with multiple sclerosis. SNR measurements were performed to ascertain the SNR efficiency of each sequence. Results Our FLAIR SSFP sequence demonstrated excellent CSF suppression and good gray matter (GM)/WM contrast. Coverage of the entire brain (5‐mm slices, 24‐cm FOV, 256 × 192 matrix) was achieved with FLAIR SSFP in less than half the scan time of a corresponding FLAIR FSE sequence with similar SNR, yielding improvements of more than 50% in SNR efficiency. Axial scans of a volunteer with multiple sclerosis show clearly visible plaques and very good visualization of brain parenchyma. Conclusion We have demonstrated the feasibility of a very fast fluid‐suppressed neuroimaging technique using SSFP. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.