Tri- and bi-exponential T2 relaxation MRI measurements Sequence optimisation and validation
Résumé
T2 MRI mapping is used for assessment of numerous human diseases [1], and also for other fields, such as plant physiology [2]. Most biological tissues exhibit multi-exponential relaxation behaviour which characterisation is important for investigation of tissue microstructure. One of the main issues associated with T2 measurements is the insufficient sampling of the T2 decay curve (32 echoes in current studies) which leads to noise-sensitive and poor data from which extracting multi-exponential relaxation information are questionable. In the present study, an optimised MRI CPMG sequence for assessment of multi-exponential relaxation was developed. It was validated on the specially designed MRI phantom and applied on vegetable tissues. The MRI results were compared to NMR T2 measurements. 1. Storas T.H. et al., 2008, J.Magn.Reson.Imaging, 1166-72 2. Musse M. et al., 2009, Magn.Reson.Imaging, 709-19