• Zhao Wei, Ya-Jun Ma, Hyungseok Jang, Wenhui Yang, and Jiang Du.
• Department of Radiology, University of California San Diego, CA, United States; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; Institute of Electrical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. Electronic address: weizhao@mail.iee.ac.cn.
• J. Magn. Reson. 2020 May 1; 314: 106725.

PurposeTo demonstrate the feasibility of a new method for measuring T1 of short T2 species based on an adiabatic inversion recovery-prepared three-dimensional ultrashort echo time Cones (3D IR-UTE-Cones) sequence.MethodsT1 values for short T2 species were quantified using 3D IR-UTE-Cones data acquired with different repetition times (TRs) and inversion times (TIs). An inversion efficiency factor Q was introduced into the fitting model to accurately calculate T1 values for short T2 species. Experiments were performed on twelve MnCl2 aqueous solution phantoms with a wide range of T1 values and T2* values on a 3 T clinical MR system to verify the efficacy of the proposed method. For comparison, a variable flip angle UTE (VFA-UTE) sequence, a variable TR UTE (VTR-UTE) sequence, and a conventional 2D IR fast spin echo (IR-FSE) sequence were also used to quantify T1 values of those phantoms. T1 values were compared between all performed sequences.ResultsThe proposed 3D IR-UTE-Cones method provided higher contrast images of short T2 phantoms and measured much shorter T1 values than the VFA-UTE, VTR-UTE and 2D IR-FSE methods. T1 values as short as 2.95 ms could be measured by the 3D IR-UTE-Cones sequence. The 3D IR-UTE-Cones methods with different TRs were applied to different ranges of T1 measurement, and the scan time was significantly decreased by using 5 TIs along the recovery curves to perform fitting with comparable accuracy.ConclusionThe 3D IR-UTE-Cones sequence could accurately measure short T1 values while providing high contrast images of short T2 species.Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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