Ming-Long Wu1, 2, Hing-Chiu Chang3, 4, Tzu-Cheng Chao1, 2, Pei-Hsin Wu5, Nan-Kuei Chen6
1Institute of Medical Informatics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; 2Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; 3Global Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Taipei, Taiwan; 4Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; 5Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; 6Brain Imaging and Analysis Center, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States
Imaging anatomical structures in human midbrain is important for investigating Parkinsons Disease (PD). Conventionally, T2* gradient echo method with long echo time (> 20ms) can be used to visualize small nuclei in midbrain. However, clear visualization of midbrain nuclei remains challenging using SPGR due to limited contrast and suboptimal efficiency. In this study, we show that susceptibility-enhanced 3D inversed Double Echo Steady State (iDESS) can be used to efficiently obtain high contrast images for visualization of midbrain nuclei. Results from 1.5 Tesla MRI also demonstrate that iDESS has high potential to improve Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) guidance in PD.