Computer Simulations of 3D MPRAGE in Human Brain with Inclusion of Inadvertent Magnetization Transfer Effects

Gerald Matson¹, Hui Liu¹

Magnetization transfer (MT) effects in the human brain occur when there is magnetization transfer between the free and bound water pools associated with gray and white matter. These MT effects can become significant, particular when longer excite pulses are used, for example, to induce uniform tip angles in the presence of non-uniform RF fields. Therefore, we developed a simulation program written in Matlab to calculate these MT effects, and to simulate the 3D MPRAGE experiment. The simulations show that the MT effects must be taken into account when longer excite pulses are used in the 3D MPRAGE experiment.