• Lili He, Jinghua Wang, Zhong-Lin Lu, Beth M Kline-Fath, and Nehal A Parikh.
• Perinatal Institute, Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, 3333 Burnet Ave., MLC 7009, Cincinnati, OH, 45229, USA. lili.he@cchmc.org.
• Pediatr Radiol. 2018 Aug 1; 48 (8): 1139-1151.

BackgroundSequence optimization in neonates might improve detection sensitivity of abnormalities for a variety of conditions. However this has been historically challenging because tissue properties such as the longitudinal relaxation time and proton density differ significantly between neonates and adults.ObjectiveTo optimize the magnetization-prepared rapid gradient echo (MP-RAGE) sequence to enhance both signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) efficiencies.Materials And MethodsWe optimized neonatal MP-RAGE sequence through (1) reducing receive bandwidth to decrease noise, (2) shortening acquisition train length (acquisition number per repetition time or total number of read-out radiofrequency rephrasing pulses) using slice partial Fourier acquisition and (3) simulating the solution of Bloch's equation under optimal receive bandwidth and acquisition train length. Using the optimized sequence parameters, we scanned 12 healthy full-term infants within 2 weeks of birth and four preterm infants at 40 weeks' corrected age.ResultsCompared with a previously published neonatal protocol, we were able to reduce the total scan time by reduce the total scan time by 60% and increase the average SNR efficiency by 160% (P<0.001) and the average CNR efficiency by 26% (P=0.029).ConclusionOur in vivo neonatal brain imaging experiments confirmed that both SNR and CNR efficiencies significantly increased with our proposed protocol. Our proposed optimization methodology could be readily extended to other populations (e.g., older children, adults), as well as different organ systems, field strengths and MR sequences.

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