Meeting Banner
Abstract #1109

Bi-Component Analysis of UTE Images: A Feasibility Study

Jiang Du1, Eric Diaz1, Michael Carl2, Won Bae1, Christine Chung1, Graeme Bydder1

1Radiology, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA, United States; 2GE Healthcare, United States


Biological tissues commonly contain distinct water compartments and display multiple T2 relaxation behavior. Current standard techniques are based on multi-component fitting of multiple spin-echo images acquired with CPMG sequences. There are a group of tissues such as menisci, ligaments, tendons and cortical bone which show little or no signal with clinical CPMG or gradient echo sequences. Both free water and water bound to the collagen fibers are typically invisible. Here we propose a bi-component T2* analysis of images acquired with an ultrashort TE (UTE) sequence with a minimum TE of 8 us to quantify the free and bound water components.