Kerrin J. Pine1, Gareth R. Davies1, David J. Lurie1
1Bio-Medical Physics and Bio-Engineering, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK
Fast field-cycling (FFC) can provide access to endogenous information not available from conventional fixed-field imagers. One example is the T1 dispersion plot, where T1 is measured over a range of evolution field strengths. We present a new pulse sequence using field-cycling saturation-recovery/inversion-recovery with an implementation of point-resolved spectroscopy (PRESS), allowing dispersion plots to be produced for a voxel selected from a pilot image. On a whole-body FFC-MRI system consisting of a 59 mT permanent magnet and coaxial resistive magnet, the sensitivity of the experiment is sufficient to obtain distinctive quadrupole dips in dispersion plots of protein-rich human tissue in vivo.
Keywords