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Updated: Aug 16, 2026

Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Skeletal Muscle Disease
Published on: December 18, 2016
T1, T2 relaxation and magnetization transfer in tissue at 3T
Greg J Stanisz1, Ewa E Odrobina, Joseph Pun
1Imaging Research, Sunnybrook & Women's College Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada. stanisz@sten.sunnybrook.utoronto.ca
Abstract:
T1, T2, and magnetization transfer (MT) measurements were performed in vitro at 3 T and 37 degrees C on a variety of tissues: mouse liver, muscle, and heart; rat spinal cord and kidney; bovine optic nerve, cartilage, and white and gray matter; and human blood. The MR parameters were compared to those at 1.5 T. As expected, the T2 relaxation time constants and quantitative MT parameters (MT exchange rate, R, macromolecular pool fraction, M0B, and macromolecular T2 relaxation time, T2B) at 3 T were similar to those at 1.5 T. The T1 relaxation time values, however, for all measured tissues increased significantly with field strength. Consequently, the phenomenological MT parameter, magnetization transfer ratio, MTR, was lower by approximately 2 to 10%. Collectively, these results provide a useful reference for optimization of pulse sequence parameters for MRI at 3 T.
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