Qun He1,2, Vipul Sheth1, Hongda Shao1, Jun Chen1, Graeme Bydder1, and Jiang Du1
1University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States, 2Ningbo Jansen NMR Technology Co., Ltd., Cixi, Zhejiang, China, People's Republic of
Phase images have been a valuable source of contrast in applications such as venography and for depicting gray-white matter differences with high contrast in high field MR imaging. Phase differences evolve during typical TEs of 10 - 30ms in brain studies. It has been uncertain whether it would be possible to detect signal and obtain phase maps from ultrashort non-water protons in myelin which have typical mean T2s of 0.2 - 0.5 ms. In this study single and bicomponent T2* were measured in bovine myelin lipid, brain extract, and myelin basic proton and synthetic myelin and high quality phase maps were produced in each case.