Daehyun Yoon1, Sandip Biswal1, Brian Rutt1, Amelie Lutz1, and Brian Hargreaves1
For the
past few decades, MRI has been increasingly used for identifying peripheral
nerve injury, causing chronic and neuropathic pain. Unfortunately, a
substantial number of MRI examinations fails to find the causative nerve
damage, possibly because it is too subtle or small. Recent developments of
PET-MRI demonstrated improved detection capability of the nerve damage, but the
precise anatomic characterization of the detected lesion still remains
challenging. We introduce high-resolution 3D steady-state imaging sequences at
7T that enable examination of microstructures of peripheral nerves in
extremities. We believe our methods have great potential for improving diagnosis
of various pain syndromes.
