Kathryn E. Hammond1,2, Janine M. Lupo1, Duan Xu1, Sri Veeraraghavan1, Hana Lee3, Adam Kincaid3, Dan B. Vigneron1,2, Geoffrey T. Manley3, Sarah J. Nelson1,2, Pratik Mukherjee1
1Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), CA, USA; 2UCSF/UCB Joint Graduate Group in Bioengineering; 3Neurological Surgery, UCSF
The detection of microbleeds is important for the diagnosis and prognosis of traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study evaluated whether SWI improved microbleed detection over 2D or 3D GRE in 24 TBI patients scanned at 3T or 7T. The study reports that microbleeds were readily detectable in the short 2D GRE images, that few or no additional microbleeds were detected in the 3D GRE or SWI and that stretching in the SWI mislocated microbleeds. It concludes that the longer scan times required for 3D GRE and SWI may therefore not be necessary for clinical practice at high field.