Augmented T₁ -weighted steady state magnetic resonance imaging

T₁ contrasts obtained using short-TR incoherent steady state gradient echo (GRE) methods are generally suboptimal, to which non-T₁ factors in the signals play a major part. In this work, we proposed an augmented T₁ -weighted (aT₁ W) method to extract the signal ratio between routine GRE T₁ W and proton density-weighted signals that effectively removes the non-T₁ effects from the original T₁ W signals, including proton density, T₂ * decay, and coil sensitivity. A recently proposed multidimensional integration (MDI) technique was incorporated in the aT₁ W calculation for better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performance. For comparison between aT₁ W and T₁ W results, Monte Carlo noise analysis was performed via simulation and on scanned data, and region-of-interest (ROI) analysis and comparison was performed on the system phantom. For brain scans, the image contrast, noise behavior, and SNR of aT₁ W images were compared with routine GRE and inversion-recovery-based T₁ W images. The proposed aT₁ W method yielded saliently improved T₁ contrasts (potentially > 30% higher contrast-to-noise ratio [CNR]) than routine GRE T₁ W images. Good spatial homogeneity and signal consistency as well as high SNR/CNR were achieved in aT₁ W images using the MDI technique. For contrast-enhanced (CE) imaging, aT₁ W offered stronger post-CE contrast and better boundary delineation than T₁ MPRAGE images while using a shorter scan time.