Gary Lee1, Caroline Jordan2, 3, Jeff McCormick4, Pamela Tiet5, Brian Hargreaves2, Steven Conolly1, 5
1Berkeley/UCSF Bioengineering Joint Graduate Group, Berkeley, CA, United States; 2Radiology, Stanford University; 3Bioengineering, Stanford University; 4Molecular Environmental Biology, University of California, Berkeley; 5Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley
Many MRI applications are vulnerable to B0 inhomogeneity, including robust fat suppression, which requires better than 1 ppm homogeneity. We have tailored a pyrolytic graphite composite foam with magnetic susceptibility matched to human tissue. Here, we have experimentally demonstrated that PG foam cushions improve the B0 field uniformity to the critical threshold of 1 ppm in the neck of 6 normal volunteers at 3T. The tissue susceptibility matched PG foams consistently mitigated signal drop out, improved image SNR, and enabled far more robust frequency selective fat suppression in T1-weighted GRE images in volunteers.