Ken-Pin Hwang1,
Marcel Warntjes2, R. Jason Stafford3, Wolfgang Stefan3,
Edward F. Jackson3, John E. Madewell4, John D. Hazle3,
Zachary W. Slavens5, Tzehping L. Chi4
1Global
Applied Science Laboratory, General Electric Healthcare, Houston, TX, United
States; 2Center for Medical Imaging Science and Visualisation, Linkping
University, Linkping, Sweden; 3Department of Imaging Physics,
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, United States; 4Department
of Radiology, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX,
United States; 5MR Engineering, General Electric Healthcare,
Waukesha, WI, United States
Brain water content may be assessed with a proton density measurement as derived from a multiple gradient echo sequence, where all causes of signal inhomogeneity are properly corrected. Typically, the effective flip angle of the transmit field and T1 of tissues are mapped with multiple dedicated sequences. Here, we base our corrections on parameters produced from a single multi-parameter mapping technique. We also extrapolate the gradient echo signal using a spectral modeling technique instead of fitting the signal magnitudes. Thus absolute water content assessment is performed with two complementary sequences which provide other quantitative measurements as well.