Ahmed Magdy Elkady1,2, Chris Van Bowen1,2
1Biomedical Engineering, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada; 2National Research Council of Canada, Institute for Biodiagnostics (Atlantic), Halifax, NS, Canada
The current work presents the first report of the use of balanced steady state free precession (bSSFP) for quantitative imaging of micron-sized superparamagnetic iron oxide particles (MPIO). Segmented inversion recovery (IR) bSSFP and variable echo time (VT) bSSFP are shown to be 2-3 times more sensitive than conventional spin echo (SE) quantitative imaging of MPIO. The enhanced MPIO quantification sensitivity of bSSFP compared to SE is demonstrated to be due to diffusion effects caused by field micro-gradients created by MPIO.