Abstract #0843

Creating Short T2 Contrast with Three-Dimensional Ultrashort TE (3D UTE) Imaging

Jiang Du¹, Atsushi M. Takahashi², Sheronda Statum¹, Reni Biswas¹, Christine B. Chung¹, Graeme M. Bydder¹

¹Radiology, University of California-San Diego, San Diego, CA, USA; ²Global Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare Technologies, Menlo Park, CA, USA

There is increased interest in imaging short T2 species such as the meniscii, tendons and cortical bone. These tissues show little or no signal with conventional MR sequences. Short T2 contrast is typically generated either with echo subtraction or long 90a saturation pulses followed by gradient dephasing. Here we report on a 3D UTE sequence (minimum TE = 8 s) using several long T2 suppression techniques including long T2 saturation, adiabatic inversion, dual echo subtraction, and combinations of these. The efficacy of these approaches was demonstrated through in vitro and in vivo imaging of meniscii, tendons and cortical bone.