Abstract #2502

Midbrain Nuclei Visualization Improved by Susceptibility-Enhanced 3D Inversed Double Echo Steady State (IDESS) Imaging

Ming-Long Wu¹,², Hing-Chiu Chang³,⁴, Tzu-Cheng Chao¹,², Pei-Hsin Wu⁵, Nan-Kuei Chen⁶

¹Institute of Medical Informatics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; ²Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; ³Global Applied Science Laboratory, GE Healthcare, Taipei, Taiwan; ⁴Institute of Biomedical Electronics and Bioinformatics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; ⁵Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan; ⁶Brain Imaging and Analysis Center, Duke University, Durham, NC, United States

Imaging anatomical structures in human midbrain is important for investigating Parkinsons Disease (PD). Conventionally, T2* gradient echo method with long echo time (> 20ms) can be used to visualize small nuclei in midbrain. However, clear visualization of midbrain nuclei remains challenging using SPGR due to limited contrast and suboptimal efficiency. In this study, we show that susceptibility-enhanced 3D inversed Double Echo Steady State (iDESS) can be used to efficiently obtain high contrast images for visualization of midbrain nuclei. Results from 1.5 Tesla MRI also demonstrate that iDESS has high potential to improve Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) guidance in PD.