Abstract #0208

Vasilic B, Wehrli F

The autocorrelation function (ACF) can be used to estimate the thickness anisotropy tensor of trabecular bone. The ACF is calculated from MR acquired k-space data. We show that aniosotropic acquisitions can be utilized to greatly decrease scan times while increasing the signal to noise ratio and preserving the accuracy of high resolution scans in determining the principal values of the thickness anisotropy tensor. The proposed fast anisotropic autocorrelation readout (FAAR) technique is demonstrated with measurements of a phantom consisting of periodicly spaced soybean oil inclusions.