Rapid and Simultaneous Measurements of T1, T2 and Relative Proton Density (M0) for Dynamic Musculoskeletal Studies

Paulo Loureiro de Sousa^1,2, Alexandre Vignaud³, Servanne Fleury^1,2, Pierre G. Carlier^1,2

Skeletal muscle functional imaging can provide valuable information on the physiological changes accompanying muscle activation Because skeletal muscle physiological adaptations can simultaneously impact several NMR physical parameters (T1, T2, T2*, relative spin density (M0)), mono-parametric NMR imaging may not be able to describe adequately the complex behavior of stressed or exercised muscle. We investigated the feasibility of fast simultaneous measurements of T1, T2 and M0 using an Inversion Recovery TrueFISP (IR-TrueFISP) sequence. The main advantage of this method is the possibility of performing dynamic T1, T2 and M0 measurements in a single multi-parametric acquisition protocol, with relatively high temporal resolution.