Fast quantitative mapping of absolute water content with full brain coverage

Quantitative mapping of water content, especially in the human brain, has the potential to provide important information for the study and diagnosis of diseases associated with a focal or global change in tissue water homeostasis. In the current work, an imaging method for the precise and accurate quantification of tissue water content is presented. The method allows the acquisition of water content maps with voxel dimensions of 1x1x2 mm(3) and full brain coverage in less than 10 min on a standard clinical 1.5 T scanner. The precision was optimised for human brain imaging and possible sources of systematic error were carefully investigated, demonstrating the ability of the method to quantify water content with high accuracy and precision. The approach was validated in phantom experiments and quantitative cerebral water content maps of a group of 10 healthy volunteers were obtained.