Multi-Slice Myelin Water Imaging for Practical Clinical Applications at 3.0 T

Junyu Guo¹, Qing Ji¹, Wilburn E. Reddick¹

Myelin water imaging is a promising technique for evaluating white matter diseases. Poor image quality and a long acquisition time are major obstacles to practical clinical applications. In this study, a novel postprocessing method with an efficient multi-slice acquisition scheme, called T2 spectrum analysis using a weighted regularized non-negative least squares algorithm and non-local mean filter (T2SPARC), is presented to overcome these obstacles. In vivo results from healthy volunteers and a patient with leukoencephalopathy showed that the T2SPARC method can generate robust and high-quality myelin water fraction (MWF) maps of 10 slices within 11 minutes.