Alexander Watts1, Robert Stobbe1,
Christian Beaulieu1
1Biomedical Engineering, University of
Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
3D
projection imaging has potential benefits in sodium MRI due to ultra-low echo
times, but the spherical sampling of k-space leads to isotropic voxels which
may not be ideal for imaging thin structures such as cartilage in the knee.
Oblate-spheroidal twisted projection imaging, which yields anisotropic
voxels, was compared to isotropic acquisition; both projection acquisitions
had equal voxel volume (2.56 mm3), twist, readout length, and scan time. The anisotropic projection acquisition had
better effective in-plane resolution in a saline resolution phantom and
yielded sharper, higher quality sagittal sodium images of human knee
cartilage (n=3) in 9 min at 4.7T.