Fast quantitative 3D ultrashort echo time MRI of cortical bone using extended cones sampling

To investigate the effect of stretching sampling window on quantitative 3D ultrashort TE (UTE) imaging of cortical bone at 3 T.

Ten bovine cortical bone and 17 human tibial midshaft samples were imaged with a 3T clinical MRI scanner using an 8-channel knee coil. Quantitative 3D UTE imaging biomarkers, including T₁ , $$ , magnetization transfer ratio and magnetization transfer modeling, were performed using radial or spiral Cones sampling trajectories with various durations. Errors in UTE-MRI biomarkers as a function of sampling time were evaluated using radial sampling as a reference standard.

For both bovine and human cortical bone samples, no significant differences were observed for all UTE biomarkers (single-component $$ , bicomponent $$ and relative fractions, T₁ , magnetization transfer ratio, and magnetization transfer modeling of macromolecular fraction) for spiral sampling windows of 992 µs to 1600 µs compared with a radial sampling window of 688 µs.

The total scan time can be reduced by 76% with quantification errors less than 5%. Quantitative UTE-MRI techniques can be greatly accelerated using longer sampling windows without significant quantification errors.