Noam Ben-Eliezer1,
Daniel K. Sodickson1, Kai Tobias Block2
1Bernard
and Irene Schwartz Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology,
New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States; 2Bernard
and Irene Schwartz Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology,
NYU Langone Medical Center, New York, NY, United States
T2 contrast is one of the most clinically useful tools for non-invasive diagnosis and prognosis. Genuine T2 quantification, however, is impractical due to the long acquisition times associated with full Spin-Echo (SE) acquisitions, or, for fast multi-echo SE sequences, is severely hampered by field inhomogeneities, non-rectangular slice profiles, diffusion effects, and by an inherent bias caused by stimulated echoes. We present a new technique for generating T2 maps from multi-echo data, based on full Bloch simulation of the experimental pulse-sequence. The technique is assumption free and can further incorporate any experimental factors, e.g., pulse shapes, multiple T2 components and more.