Abstract #2749

Improved T2-Quantification with Slice Selective MSE-Sequences

Andreas Petrovic^1,2, Eva Scheurer², Kathrin Yen², Rudolf Stollberger¹

¹Institute of Medical Engineering, University of Technology Graz, Graz, Austria; ²Ludwig Boltzmann Institute - Clincal Forensic Imaging, Graz, Austria

Fast and accurate measurement of the transverse relaxation time T₂ has been the goal of numerous papers. However, in the presence of B₁+ inhomogeneities and non-ideal slice profiles T₂ quantification is impaired by T₁ mixing effects. This leads to an overestimation of T₂ when exponential curve fitting is used. In this work the generating functions approach is used to calculate a realistic decay which can be fitted to the multi-echo data. The algorithm was validated on phantom and in-vivo data. T₁ mixing could be strongly reduced and accurate T₂ values can be obtained.