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Updated: May 4, 2026
Registered Bioimaging of Nanomaterials for Diagnostic and Therapeutic Monitoring
Published on: December 9, 2010
Field-cycling imaging yields repeatable brain R1 dispersion measurement at fields strengths below 0.2 Tesla with
Nicholas Senn1,2, P James Ross3,4, Reina Ayde4,5
1Aberdeen Biomedical Imaging Centre, School of Medicine, Medical Sciences and Nutrition, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK. nicholas.senn2@abdn.ac.uk.
Objectives:
By rapidly changing magnetic field strength between 0.2 and 200 mT during the pulse sequence Field-Cycling Imaging (FCI) makes it possible to identify and evaluate new quantitative markers of pathology derived from dispersion of spin-lattice relaxation rate (R1) in vivo. The aim of this work was to determine the most effective approach to reliably estimate multi-field R1 dispersion measurements in brain tissue using FCI.
Materials And Methods:
This repeatability study consisted of twenty participants with moderate or severe small vessel disease. Each participant underwent 3 T MRI and FCI scans, repeated 30 days apart. After R1 maps were generated at 0.2, 2, 20, and 200 mT, co-registered tissue labels generated from 3 T MRI were used to extract tissue averaged values of R1 dispersion from regions of white matter (WM) and WM hyperintensities (WMHs).
Results:
The fitted model which yielded best overall image contrast between WM and WMH regions and R1 dispersion model adherence was determined. Tissue averaged values of R1 (0.2 mT) and R1 dispersion slope exhibited Cohen's d effect sizes of 3.07 and 1.48, respectively, between regions of WM and WMH. The cohort study results were repeatable between study visits.
Discussion:
Differences in R1 measurements could repeatably be discerned between normal and abnormal appearing brain tissues.
