1The Ohio State Univeristy, Columbus, OH, United States, 2Center for Perinatal Research, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH, United States
The 3D FLASH sequence is frequently used in structural imaging of the
brain. Tissue
contrast inhomogeneity, resulting from inhomogeneous
transmit field and receiver sensitivity, significantly affects quantitative
structural brain analyses such as classification and quantification of brain
tissues in voxel-based morphometry and detection of pathological brain changes
in clinical studies. It is important
to optimize the sequence to jointly improve contrast efficiency and image
homogeneity. In this work, we propose optimal
imaging parameters and present methods to improve contrast efficiency and reduce
or eliminate image inhomogeneity.
