Keiko Miyazaki1, David J. Collins1, Dow-Mu Koh1,2, Martin O. Leach1, Matthew R. Orton1
1Cancer Research UK Clinical Magnetic Resonance Research Group, The Institute of Cancer Research, Sutton, Surrey, UK; 2Academic Department of Radiology, Royal Marsden Hospital, Sutton, Surrey, UK
The variable flip angle method allows accurate and efficient T1 quantification which is important in many fields of MR. Optimisation of flip angles when imaging samples with a large T1 range of values has been far from trivial and little work has been published on this subject. During the optimisation, it is important that the actual distribution of T1 values in the image sample is taken into account. We propose a novel flip angle optimisation approach, based on the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) theory, which is weighted by the probability distribution of the T1 range of interest.