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Abstract #4000

Ultrashort Echo Time Imaging of Cortical Bone at 7 Tesla Field Strength

Roland Krug1, Peder E. Larson1, Chunsheng Wang1, Andrew J. Burghardt1, Douglas A.C. Kelley2, Thomas M. Link1, Xiaoliang Zhang1, Dan Vigneron1, Sharmila Majumdar1

1Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; 2GE Healthcare Technologies, San Francisco, CA


More solid or semi-solid tissues such as trabecular and cortical bone have little to no signal in conventional MRI scans because of their ultra short T2. In this feasibility study we have implemented a 3D ultra-short TE sequence on a 7T and 3T MR scanner and compared its performance using three fresh cadaveric radii specimen. We found a significant increase in SNR at 7T but no significant different T2 values between the field strengths. We concluded that UHF MRI at 7T has great potential for imaging tissues with short T2. This is mainly due to the significant increase in SNR.