Water-Specific Quantitative MRI Relaxometry of the Brain Using Spatial-Spectral Water Excitation: Preliminary Experience

Stephan William Anderson¹, Jorge A. Soto¹, Osamu Sakai¹, Hernan Jara¹

The purpose of this work was to test a pulse sequence for spatial- and spectral-selective qMRI relaxometry in vivo for deriving qMRI parameters in brain imaging. The brain of a volunteer was imaged using both non-chemically selective mixed-TSE sequence as well as the SSE-mixed-TSE pulse sequence to derive parametric maps of PD, T1, T2 (including secular-T2), and ADC of the brain. T2 was found to be consistently longer for the SSE-mixed-TSE pulse sequence. Spectrally selective qMRI may offer insight into both normal structures as well as pathology without the confounding effects of lipids.