Bloch Simulations of UTE, WASPI and SWIFT for Imaging Short T2 Tissues

Michael Carl¹, Jing-Tzyh Alan Chiang², Eric Han¹, Graeme Bydder², Kevin King¹

Three specialized sequences designed to image short T2 tissues are Ultrashort TE (UTE) imaging, Water And Fat Suppressed Projection Imaging (WASPI), and SWeep Imaging with Fourier Transformation (SWIFT). We present theoretical work including Bloch simulations to investigate the T2 blurring characteristics of these three techniques. Simulated images obtained with WASPI and SWIFT show comparable T2 blurring, and slightly increased blurring with the UTE technique.