Myelin UTE imaging, to be or not to be?

This work attempts to directly image ultrashort T₂ myelin signals using ultra short echo time (UTE) MRI. Long T₂ water signals were suppressed using either adiabatic inversion recovery (AIR) to null signal of a single T₁, or multiple adiabatic inversion recovery (MAIR) to null signal over a range of T₁s. AIR-UTE showed contrast in white matter, but no such signal was observed in MAIR-UTE. These findings indicate that the AIR-UTE white matter signals are unsuppressed water signals and that the solid proton signals of myelin decay too quickly to be observed by UTE MRI.