Ece Ercan1, Peter Brnert2, Andrew Webb1, Itamar Ronen1
1C.J. Gorter Center for High Field MRI, Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands; 2Philips Research Laboratories, Hamburg, Germany
We present a whole-brain tissue-based characterization of the ultrashort T2 components using 3D UTE MRI. Initial results show distinct distributions of ultrashort relaxation rates in gray and white matter. The estimated mean and distribution of the ultrashort T2 value for white matter is likely to contain contributions from cell membranes as well as from myelin, which is more ubiquitous in white matter than in gray matter. This implies that the actual ultrashort T2 value of myelin protons may be even shorter than the mean value found here and in previous works.
Keywords