Michael Carl1, Mark Bydder2, Atsushi Takahashi1, Eric Han1, Graeme Bydder2
1GE Healthcare, Applied Science Lab,
Milwaukee, WI, USA; 2Radiology, University of California, San Diego,
CA, USA
When using UTE methods to image short or ultra short T2 species, such as ligaments, tendons or cortical bone, the intrinsic T2 can be on the same order as , and the signal decay during the RF pulse may no longer be ignored. In this work we derive a generalized Ernst angle equation to select a nominal flip angle (for a given maximum B1) that maximizes signal amplitude for these circumstances. In addition, we derive an analytic expression for an effective TE for short T2 species.