Abstract #0348

Spinal Cord Structural Imaging with Suppressed CSF Signal Using DANTE Pulse Trains

Linqing Li¹, Yazhuo Kong¹, Yuri Zaitsu¹, Lucy A.E. Matthews², Peter Jezzard¹

¹FMRIB Centre, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom; ²Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

DANTE pulse trains are rapid series of low flip angle pulses interspersed with gradients. Its been previously demonstrated during application of DANTE, flowing CSF is largely attenuated relative to static tissue signal is mostly preserved. In this study, multi-contrast CSF-suppressed sequence using DANTE prepared 2D-TSE was implemented and compared to non-prepared 2D-TSE and MEDIC sequences. Preliminary results demonstrate metrics of contrast-to-noise ratio between spinal cord and CSF regions (CNRcord) in DANTE-TSE images is improved by a factor of 2 compared with images acquired with conventional approaches. Sagittal Imaging quality can be significantly improved due to flow-suppression effects from DANTE pluses.