Tony Stoecker1,
Kaveh Vahedipour1, Eberhard Pracht1, Daniel Brenner1,
N. Jon Shah1,2
1Institute of
Neuroscience & Medicine - 4, Forschungszentrum Juelich, Juelich, Germany;
2Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, JARA, RWTH Aachen
University, Aachen, Germany
Mapping of relaxation times and proton density with high isotropic resolution is best performed with a 3D acquisition and, thus, short TR. As refocusing of transverse magnetization is unavoidable in such approaches, accurate quantification needs a signal equation accounting for T2. Here, the DESS sequence was chosen, where every Nth pulse was replaced by a 180 magnetization preparation pulse (MP-DESS). The echoes between two MP-pulses are segmented into several images along the recovery. A proper signal equation is given by the extended phase graph. The resulting least-squares fit yields accurate T1, T2, and M0 maps in vivo.