Magnetic resonance in medicine : official journal of the Society of Magnetic Resonance in Medicine
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Nyquist ghosts are an inherent artifact in echo planar imaging acquisitions. An approach to robustly eliminate Nyquist ghosts is presented that integrates two previous Nyquist ghost correction techniques: temporal domain encoding (phase labeling for additional coordinate encoding: PLACE and spatial domain encoding (phased array ghost elimination: PAGE). Temporal encoding modulates the echo planar imaging acquisition trajectory from frame to frame, enabling one to interleave data to remove inconsistencies that occur between sampling on positive and negative gradient readouts. ⋯ If the level of ghosting varies significantly from image to image, however, the signal cancellation that occurs with PLACE can adversely affect SNR-sensitive applications such as perfusion imaging with arterial spin labeling. This work proposes integrating PLACE into a PAGE-based reconstruction process to yield significantly better Nyquist ghost correction that is more robust than PLACE or PAGE alone. The robustness of this method is demonstrated in the presence of magnetic field drift with an in-vivo arterial spin labeling perfusion experiment.
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Nyquist ghost artifacts are a serious issue in echo planar imaging. These artifacts primarily originate from phase difference between even and odd echo images and can be removed or reduced using phase correction methods. The commonly used 1D phase correction can only correct phase difference along readout axis. 2D correction is, therefore, necessary when phase difference presents along both readout and phase encoding axes. ⋯ Specifically, theoretical analysis of noise amplification and effect of phase estimation error is provided, and tradeoff between noise and ghost is studied. A new 2D phase correction method with improved polynomial fitting, joint homodyne processing and phase correction, compatibility with tight field-of-view is then proposed. Various results show that the proposed method can robustly generate images free of Nyquist ghosts and other image artifacts even in oblique scans or when cross-term eddy current terms are significant.
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The magnetization transfer ratio of the lumbar discs was spatially quantified from age-matched subjects and the nucleus pulposus magnetization transfer ratio was correlated with T2-weighted Pfirrmann grades. A moderate and significant linear correlation between magnetization transfer ratio and Pfirrmann grades was observed, suggesting that nucleus pulposus collagen relative density increases with degeneration. ⋯ This observation may suggest a possible increase in absolute collagen content, in addition to increased collagen relative density. In summary, magnetization transfer MRI of the disc may serve as a noninvasive diagnostic tool for disc degeneration, in addition to other MRI techniques specific to proteoglycan content.
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Proton resonance frequency shift-based MR thermometry (MRT) is hampered by temporal magnetic field changes. Temporal changes in the magnetic susceptibility distribution lead to nonlocal field changes and are, therefore, a possible source of errors. The magnetic volume susceptibility of tissue is temperature dependent. ⋯ To study the implications for a clinical case, simulations were performed in a 3D breast model. Temperature errors were quantified by computation of magnetic field changes in the glandular tissue, resulting from susceptibility changes in a thermally heated region. The results of the experiments and simulations showed that the temperature-induced susceptibility changes of water and fat lead to significant errors in proton resonance frequency shift-based MR thermometry.
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Measuring T(2) at 7.0 T is not trivial due to RF inhomogeneity effects, however, gradient echo sampling of a spin echo is insensitive to RF pulse errors, does not suffer from significant distortions, and allows T'(2) and T(2) to be estimated simultaneously. Gradient echo sampling of a spin echo results are relatively sensitive to noise and therefore fitting methods and timing parameters were optimized: a weighted linear fit reduced the errors in T(2) compared to a nonlinear fit, the optimum spin echo time was approximately equal to the expected T(2) and decreasing the number of gradient echoes minimized the error of the estimated T(2). T(2), T'(2), and T*(2) decreased with field strength in frontal gray matter, occipital gray matter, and white matter, with T(2) having a linear dependence (frontal gray matter: 87, 76, 47 ms, occipital gray matter: 80, 68, 46 ms and white matter: 80, 71, 47 ms at 1.5, 3.0 and 7.0 T, respectively).