hide
Free keywords:
-
Abstract:
Multi-parametric quantitative MRI enables simultaneous measurement of MR parameters and offers the potential to characterise human brain microstructure. An efficient implementation of this concept, the multi-parameter mapping (MPM) protocol, uses 3 multi-echo 3D FLASH volumes to simultaneously quantify R1, R2*, PD and MT. Ultra high spatial resolution is needed to resolve small structures playing an important role in brain function, e.g. cortical laminae, but means low SNR and high sensitivity to respiration-related variation of the B0 field, particularly at 7T. We addressed B0 field fluctuations by implementing free induction decay (FID) navigators into the MPM protocol, and tested their performance for 500 µm quantitative parameter mapping.