Optimization of the MR Acquisition Parameters for Quantitative Measurement of Brain Iron in Alzheimer's Disease

Venkata Veerendranadh Chebrolu¹, Subhamoy Mandal¹, Sheshadri Thiruvenkadam¹, Rakesh Mullick¹, John F. Schenck²

Accurate quantification of brain iron would be useful in early diagnosis of Alzheimers disease. In this work the MR acquisition parameters for quantitative measurement of brain iron (T2) were optimized through the use of Cramr-Rao bound (CRB) analysis. The noise performance at different echo-times was analyzed at different signal-to-noise ratios and at different T2. CRB analysis shows that noise performance is independent of first echo-time and there exists a line of optimality around which the optimal second echo-times for a two echo acquisition are clustered.