Using MRI for depicting solid cortical bone structures is of increasing clinical interest. Due to its low water content and short transverse relaxation time, cortical bone appears as signal void in conventional gradient echo or spin echo pulse sequences. This allows “black bone” techniques to be used when air does not confuse the visualization of cortical bone. In cases differentiation between bone tissues and ai are desired “bright bone” techniques utilizing Ultrashort echo time (UTE) or Zero TE (ZTE) MRI-have been proposed. Long T2-suppression methods (e.g., echo subtraction, long T2 saturation) are often applied to generate positive cortical bone contrast. However, clinical applications of these methods are still limited due to significant increase in acquisition time and reduced SNR efficiency. Recently a prototype proton density (PD)-weighted, zero TE (ZT) sequence has been demonstrated clinically. This work aims to improve the bright bone MRI using the ZTE sequence by optimizing the bone signal during data acquisition, minimizing partial volume effect with ultra high resolution data acquisition and optimizing the image processing for better bone/air differentiation.
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