CPMG imaging sequences for high field in vivo transverse relaxation studies

Two-dimensional Fourier transform Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill (CPMG) imaging sequences were implemented on 1.9-T and 1.5-T imaging systems in order to test their ability to characterize in vivo transverse decay curves (TDCs). Both hard- and soft-pulse CPMG imaging sequences, consisting of up to 128 echoes with echo spacings of approximately 10 ms were developed, implemented, and tested. These sequences provide one of the most detailed samplings of TDCs from image data sets reported to date. Good agreement between image-extracted T2 values and spectroscopically obtained T2 values of NiCl2-doped saline solutions was found with both hard- and soft-pulse sequences. In vivo TDCs were extracted from rabbit and human image data sets. For several tissues, biexponential TDC fits provided considerable improvement over monoexponential fits and the sensitivity of the fitting parameters to positive baseline offsets was examined. With the time coverage of the relaxation decay curves available from these sequences, the TDCs from white matter in humans appear largely monoexponential while those from cortical grey matter demonstrate biexponential behavior.