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Ultrashort TE imaging with off‐resonance saturation contrast (UTE‐OSC)
Author(s) -
Du Jiang,
Takahashi Atsushi M.,
Bydder Mark,
Chung Christine B.,
Bydder Graeme M.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
magnetic resonance in medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.696
H-Index - 225
eISSN - 1522-2594
pISSN - 0740-3194
DOI - 10.1002/mrm.22007
Subject(s) - saturation (graph theory) , nuclear magnetic resonance , imaging phantom , magnetic resonance imaging , contrast (vision) , scanner , chemistry , resonance (particle physics) , materials science , physics , optics , medicine , radiology , atomic physics , mathematics , combinatorics
Short T 2 species such as the Achilles tendon and cortical bone cannot be imaged with conventional MR sequences. They have a much broader absorption lineshape than long T 2 species, therefore they are more sensitive to an appropriately placed off‐resonance irradiation. In this work, a technique termed ultrashort TE (UTE) with off‐resonance saturation contrast (UTE‐OSC) is proposed to image short T 2 species. A high power saturation pulse was placed +1 to +2 kHz off the water peak to preferentially saturate signals from short T 2 species, leaving long T 2 water and fat signals largely unaffected. The subtraction of UTE images with and without an off‐resonance saturation pulse effectively suppresses long T 2 water and fat signals, creating high contrast for short T 2 species. The UTE‐OSC technique was validated on a phantom, and applied to bone samples and healthy volunteers on a clinical 3T scanner. High‐contrast images of the Achilles tendon and cortical bone were generated with a high contrast‐to‐noise ratio (CNR) of the order of 12 to 20 between short T 2 and long T 2 species within a total scan time of 4 to 10 min. Magn Reson Med, 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.