Abstract #0500

Simultaneous Estimation of T2 & ADC in Human Articular Cartilage In Vivo with a Modified 3D DESS Sequence at 3T

Ernesto Staroswiecki^1,2, Kristin Lee Granlund^1,2, Marcus Tedrow Alley¹, Garry Evan Gold¹, Brian Andrew Hargreaves¹

¹Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; ²Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

While ADC and T₂ maps have been suggested as methods to obtain biochemical information generating them in cartilage is usually slow or limited by SAR, SNR, or distortion. In this work we present modifications to 3D DESS that enable manipulation of diffusion weighting of the sequence. We then acquire two datasets with this sequence with different weightings to generate two high-resolution images with different contrast and, by fitting to the signal equations, T₂ and ADC maps. We show the accuracy of this method with a phantom study and demonstrate maps in vivo that are free of evident artifacts or distortion.