Lauri Juhani Lehto1,2, Curt Corum2, Djaudat Idiyatullin2, Michael Garwood2, Olli Grhn1
1A. I. Virtanen Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Kuopio, Kuopio, Pohjois-Savo, Finland; 2Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, Minneapolis, MN, USA
We show in a proof of principle experiment that the imaging sequence SWIFT is able to enhance lipid signals (having very short T1 and T2) due to its extremely short dead time. Images of a lipid phantom taken with SWIFT and FLASH are compared qualitatively and quantitatively. With increasing flip angle the lipid signals imaged with SWIFT increase considerably, whereas for FLASH the difference is small. This shows promise that SWIFT could image short T2 signals from low concentration lipid signals in pathological cells.
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