Abstract #2371

Evidence of Tissue Conductivity as a Source of Signal Inhomogeneities in Ultrashort Echo Time (UTE) Imaging

Ferdinand Schweser¹,², Li Huang,¹³, Karl-Heinz Herrmann¹, Martin Krmer¹, Andreas Deistung¹, Jrgen R. Reichenbach¹

¹Medical Physics Group, Institute of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology I, Jena University Hospital - Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany; ²School of Medicine, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany; ³Abbe School of Photonics, Faculty for Physics and Astronomy, Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Jena, Germany

In this contribution we investigated with a dedicated phantom experiment B₁⁺ contributions to UTE signal inhomogeneities and showed that B₁-related effects substantially affect the UTE signal. By applying Electric Property Tomography (EPT) to the complex-valued UTE signal we demonstrate that B₁-effects due to the underlying tissue electrical conductivity are a major source of both magnitude and phase UTE signal inhomogeneity.