• Jeffrey R Korzan, Monica Gorassini, Derek Emery, Zaki A Taher, and Christian Beaulieu.
• Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2002 Jul 1; 16 (1): 21-7.

PurposeTo demonstrate the feasibility of obtaining high-quality magnetic resonance (MR) images of the human cervical spinal cord in vivo at a magnetic field strength of 3 T and to optimize the signal contrast between gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) on 2D gradient recalled echo (GRE) images of the cervical spinal cord.Materials And MethodsUsing a custom-built, anatomically molded radio frequency (RF) surface coil, the repetition time and flip angle of a 2D GRE sequence were systematically varied in five volunteers to assess tissue contrast in the cervical spinal cord.ResultsThe 2D GRE parameters for an optimal balance between gray-white matter and CSF-white matter contrast at 3 T were determined to be a time-to-repetition (TR) of 2000 msec and a flip angle of 45 degrees, with the constant short time-to-echo (TE) of 12 msec used in this study. Excellent tissue contrast and visualization of the internal anatomy of the spinal cord was demonstrated reproducibly in eight subjects using these optimal parameters.ConclusionThis study demonstrates that imaging the cervical spinal cord and delineating internal spinal cord structures such as gray and white matter is feasible at 3 T.Copyright 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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