Kathleen A. Williams1, Kamila Szulc1, Caixia Hu1, Jens H. Jensen1, Joseph A. Helpern1,2
1Department of Radiology, CBI, NYU School of Medicine, New York, USA; 2Center for Advanced Brain Imaging, The Nathan Kline Institute, Orangeburg, NY, USA
The magnetic field correlation (MFC) is a quantitative MRI metric that characterizes magnetic field inhomogeneities generated in the brain by iron-rich tissue structures. The theoretically predicted time dependence of the MFC has been previously shown in phantoms. Here the time dependence of the MFC is demonstrated in vivo for human brain. By fitting to a model, the observed time dependence is found to be consistent with field inhomogeneities that vary on a length scale of 10 to 20 microns, which is comparable to the size of known iron-rich tissue structures within the brain.