Lauri Juhani Lehto1, Djaudat Idiyatullin2,
Curtis Andrew Corum2, Michael Garwood2, Olli Heikki
Grhn1
1A. I. Virtanen Institute for Molecular
Medicine, University of Kuopio, Kuopio, Eastern Finland, Finland; 2Center
for Magnetic Resonance Research, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN,
United States
The
aim of this work was to directly detect signal from the short T2 component in
the brain using the SWIFT sequence that allows almost simultaneous excitation
and detection. To detect the short T2 component, the overwhelming long T2
component signal was suppressed either by using long adiabatic inversion
pulses or by suppressing the short T2 component and subtracting that from a
normal SWIFT image. Results show relative enhancement of white matter
structures in the brain. The contrast in the latter approach is interpreted
to have a contribution also from MTC and thus represents combined direct and
indirect detection of the short T2 pool.