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Updated: Jul 10, 2026
Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Skeletal Muscle Disease
Published on: December 18, 2016
Quantitative T2 measurement of a single voxel with arbitrary shape using pinwheel excitation and CPMG acquisition
Qin Qin1, John C Gore, Robin A de Graaf
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. qin@mri.jhu.edu
Objective:
The aim of this study is to present a new approach for making quantitative single-voxel T (2) measurements from an arbitrarily shaped region of interest (ROI), where the advantage of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) per unit time of the single-voxel approach over conventional imaging approach can be achieved.
Materials And Methods:
Two-dimensional (2D) spatially selective radiofrequency (RF) pulses are proposed in this work for T (2) measurements based on using interleaved spiral trajectories in excitation k-space (pinwheel excitation pulses), combined with a summed Carr-Purcell Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) echo acquisition. The technique is described and compared to standard multi-echo imaging methods, on a two-compartment water phantom and an excised brain tissue.
Results:
The studies show good agreement between imaging and our method. The measured improvement factors of SNR per unit time of our single-voxel approach over imaging approach are close to the predicted values.
Conclusion:
Measuring T (2) relaxation times from a selected ROI of arbitrary shape using a single-voxel rather than an imaging approach can increase the SNR per unit time, which is critical for dynamic T (2) or multi-component T (2) measurements.
