Anatomical Brain Scans Derived from Quantitative T1maps: Investigation of SNR, CNR & Signal Uniformity in Comparison to Conventional Methods

Ulrike Nth¹, Steffen Volz¹, Ralf Deichmann¹

Standard T1-weighted sequences for anatomical brain imaging generally suffer from signal non-uniformities due to hardware imperfections. In contrast, highly uniform synthetic MR images with arbitrary T1 contrast can be derived from quantitative T1 maps. Purpose of this study was (1) to determine the noise level in quantitative T1 maps with whole brain coverage and 1mm isotropic resolution acquired in about 10min, (2) to calculate synthetic MDEFT and MP-RAGE anatomies with optimum tissue SNR and CNR, and (3) to compare these results with literature values for T1-weighted sequences with the same resolution and similar scan duration.