Lawrence P. Panych1,
Renxin Chu1, Chang-Sheng Mei1, Guangyi Wang1,
2, W. Scott Hoge1, Matthew Toews1, Bruno Madore1
1Department
of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston,
MA, United States; 2Department of Radiology, Guangdong General
Hospital, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
In thermometry, a number of advantages have been claimed in terms of temperature-to-noise ratio (TNR) and image contrast for sampling a spin-echo like signal in addition to the usual gradient-echo signal. The present work looked at the TNR claims more closely, in the context of abdominal imaging. While TNR advantages were observed and/or simulated for almost any combination of TR and flip angle (FA) settings for kidney imaging, due to differences in relaxation times such advantages were found in the liver only for TR < 20 ms and FA > 20 degrees or so.