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Updated: Mar 22, 2026
High-resolution Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Methods for Human Midbrain
Published on: May 10, 2012
Optimized depiction of thalamic substructures with a combination of T1-MPRAGE and phase: MPRAGE
Benjamin Bender1, Stefan Wagner2, Uwe Klose1
1Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, MR Research Group, University Hospital Tübingen, Hoppe-Seyler-Str. 3, 72076, Tübingen, Germany.
Objective:
Deep brain stimulation has received increasing attention in recent years as a treatment option for many neurological diseases. The thalamic nuclei in particular are widely used as targets. The goal of the present work was to evaluate whether the combination of two known MRI techniques can lead to identification of thalamic substructures at 3 T.
Methods:
In nine healthy subjects, an optimized 3D magnetization prepared rapid acquisition GRE (MPRAGE) protocol and phase data from a 3D GRE sequence were combined to form a new contrast (MPRAGE*). The depiction of 13 thalamic substructures was rated by two independent raters in the MPRAGE, phase and MPRAGE* image on a five-point scale. Inter-rater reliability was scored with a weighted Cohen's kappa.
Results:
Inter-rater reliability was good, with the average weighted κ = 0.68. No significant difference between the depiction of the thalamic substructures between phase and MPRAGE images could be found. MPRAGE* showed a significantly better depiction of thalamic substructures in comparison to MPRAGE and phase (p < 0.001 for both cases).
Conclusion:
The combination of an optimized MPRAGE protocol with phase data to form an MPRAGE* image leads to a further improvement in the depiction of thalamic substructures, which enables the depiction of thalamic nuclei at 3 T.
