Abstract #3322

Improved Frequency Selective Fat Suppression in the Cervical Spine and Neck with Tissue Susceptibility Matched Pyrolytic Graphite Foam

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.