Abstract #2468

Challenges in Ultrashort Echo Time Relaxometry of the Human Brain

Ece Ercan¹, Peter Brnert², Maarten J. Versluis¹, Tom Geraedts³, Andrew Webb¹, Itamar Ronen¹

¹C.J. Gorter Center for High Field MRI, Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands; ²Philips Research Laboratory, Hamburg, Germany; ³Philips Healthcare, Best, Netherlands

Ultrashort echo time (UTE) imaging is recently suggested as a potential method to probe the signal from myelin. In this study, we investigate the challenges in UTE relaxometry of the human brain through phantom experiments and UTE acquisitions from the brain white matter. We suggest an improved long T₂ suppression scheme for such experiments. We report the non-exponential behavior that we observed in the relaxometric data from the phantom with a T₂* value of 30 ms as well as in the data from human brain, which is possibly caused by non-fully suppressed tissue constituents with a T₂* value of 10-30 ms (such as myelin water).