Magnetic resonance in medicine : official journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
-
The multiband (MB) excitation and reconstruction technique was both developed and evaluated for accelerated data acquisition of arterial spin labeling (ASL) to cover whole brain perfusion maps. ⋯ The MB ASL technique is an effective method to evaluate whole brain perfusion because it minimizes the temporal spread of labeled spins across slices, resulting in more accurate perfusion measurements.
-
To acquire isotropic high-resolution, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) efficient, 3D encoded diffusion-weighted MRI data. ⋯ Diffusion-weighted 3D multislab EPI has been presented as an alternative sequence for high-resolution and high-SNR full brain coverage diffusion studies. Compared with the gold standard 2D diffusion-weighted single-shot Echo Planar Imaging, the SNR efficiency is significantly higher.
-
A novel B1+-mapping technique (B1-TRAP) is presented, which derives the actual flip angle from the frequency of signal oscillations, observed in the transient phase of unbalanced steady-state free precession sequences. ⋯ Simulations, phantom, and in vivo measurements showed that B1-TRAP offers a good compromise with respect to speed, robustness, and accuracy.
-
The single diffusion tensor model is inadequate for the reconstruction of fiber pathways in brain regions with multiple fiber orientations. To overcome this limitation, constrained spherical deconvolution has been proposed. A high reliability of constrained spherical deconvolution is, however, a pre-requisite for its use in clinical applications. ⋯ Coefficients of variations of diffusion-derived measures showed very low variation (all measures <3.1%). These results are comparable with reliability results based on the diffusion tensor model, which is commonly used in clinical settings. The reliability results found here are, therefore, promising to further investigate the use of constrained spherical deconvolution in clinical practice.