Guan Wang1,2, AbdElMonem M. El-Sharkawy1,2,
William A. Edelstein1, Michael Schr1,3, Paul A.
Bottomley1,2
1Radiology & Radiological
Science, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United
States; 2Electrical & Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore, MD, United States; 3Philips Healthcare,
Ohio, Cleveland, United States
T2 is conventionally measured by the spin-echo (SE) method. Here we present a new method of measuring T2 without echoes, utilizing the fact that long-duration adiabatic excitation pulses are prone to T2 decay during excitation. T2 is measured from the ratio of MR signals acquired with and without long-duration adiabatic pulses. T2-weighted MRI is performed by incorporating a long-duration adiabatic pre-pulse in the MRI sequence. Use of 0 adiabatic pre-pulses ensures that the other contrast properties of the MRI sequence are unaffected. The method is validated on phantoms by comparison with the SE method, and reduced to practice in MRI.
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