Magnetic resonance in medicine : official journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
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The influence of radiofrequency (RF) spin-lock pulse on the laminar appearance of articular cartilage in MR images was investigated. Spin-lock MRI experiments were performed on bovine cartilage plugs on a 4.7 Tesla small-bore MRI scanner, and on human knee cartilage in vivo on a 1.5 Tesla clinical scanner. When the normal to the surface of cartilage was parallel to B0, a typical laminar appearance was exhibited in T2-weighted images of cartilage plugs, but was absent in T1rho-weighted images of the same plugs. ⋯ T1rho dispersion (i.e., the dependence of the relaxation rate on the spin-lock frequency omega1) was observed, which reached a steady-state value of close to 2 kHz in both parallel and magic-angle orientations. These results suggest that residual dipolar interaction from motionally-restricted water and relaxation processes, such as chemical exchange, contribute to T1rho dispersion in cartilage. Further, one can reduce the laminar appearance in human articular cartilage by applying spin-lock RF pulses, which may lead to a more accurate diagnosis of degenerative changes in cartilage.
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Echo-planar imaging (EPI) is an ultrafast magnetic resonance (MR) imaging technique prone to geometric distortions. Various correction techniques have been developed to remedy these distortions. Here improvements of the point spread function (PSF) mapping approach are presented, which enable reliable and fully automated distortion correction of echo-planar images at high field strengths. ⋯ The possibility of collecting PSF data sets with total acceleration factors higher than the number of coil elements is demonstrated. Additionally, a new approach to visualize and interpret distortions in the context of various imaging and reconstruction methods based on the PSF is proposed. The reliable performance of the PSF mapping technique is demonstrated on phantom and volunteer scans at field strengths of up to 4 T.