Black-Blood Preparation Vs. Bright-Blood for Myocardial T2p-SSFP Based T2 Quantification

Ina Vernikouskaya¹, ², Peter Bernhardt¹, Wolfgang Rottbauer¹, Volker Rasche¹, ²

Quantitative T₂ mapping is required for the characterization of myocardial tissue. The superior performance of the black-blood preparation compared to the bright-blood data for myocardial T₂^* measurements in iron-overloaded thalassemia has been reported. Therefore the aim of this work was to compare the performance of the monoexponential and offset mapping algorithms for T₂ quantification based on T₂-prepared steady-state free precession imaging technique with and without black-blood preparation. The preliminary results obtained from 5 subjects showed that the offset model provide a more robust T₂ decay curve fitting for myocardial T₂ mapping compared to the simple monoexponential model in both bright- and black-blood data.