Richard D. Dortch1,2, Ke Li1,2,
Ashish A. Tamhane3, E B. Welch2,4, Dan F. Gochberg1,2,
John C. Gore1,2, Seth A. Smith1,2
1Department of Radiology and
Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States; 2Vanderbilt
University Institute of Imaging Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville,
TN, United States; 3Department of Biomedical Engineering, Illinois
Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, United States; 4MR Clinical
Science, Philips Healthcare, Cleveland, OH, United States
Quantitative
magnetization transfer (qMT) yields quantitative information about
interactions between immobile macromolecular protons and free water protons. Because
of its relatively short scan times, the pulsed, off-resonance saturation qMT
approach is most commonly employed on clinical systems; however, it suffers
from complicated data analysis and sensitivity to macromolecular proton
lineshape assumptions. The selective inversion recovery (SIR) approach does
not suffer from these shortcomings, but has not been widely implemented on
clinical systems. In this study, the SIR approach was implemented on a
clinical 3T system. The resultant qMT parameters in healthy brain were in
good agreement with previously published values.
Keywords