Quantification of T(2) in the abdomen at 3.0 T using a T(2)-prepared balanced turbo field echo sequence

The T(2)-prepared balanced turbo field echo sequence has been used to measure T(2) in phantoms and in vivo in the abdomen with low sensitivity to radiofrequency pulse errors. The effects of noise, errors in the pulse flip angles, and off resonance effects on the results have been simulated. It was found from simulations that for normal conditions, including the flip angle in the fit improved the systematic errors due to radiofrequency pulse errors and noise in the results to less than 1% without significantly increasing the random errors. For a 0.3% noise level, the standard deviation in the measured T(2) was approximately 0.003 ms. Off-resonance effects had a minimal effect on the measured T(2) value. The T(2) at 3.0 T of various abdominal organs was measured, in particular the liver (31 +/- 6 ms), spleen (54 +/- 15 ms), kidney cortex (76 +/- 6 ms), kidney medulla (61 +/- 8 ms), and pancreas (42 +/- 20 ms).