HIGH-RESOLUTION T-1 WEIGHTED MAGNETIC-RESONANCE-IMAGING OF THE DEEP BRAIN STRUCTURES USING A REDUCED BANDWIDTH

High spatial resolution T-1 weighted images of the brain were acquired in 5-13 min on a whole-body magnetic resonance imager operating at 1. 5 T. In order to obtain 5-8 cm field of view images, the receiver band width (Bw) was lowered to 2 kHz. The use of a 2 kHz Bw, instead of the standard 16 kHz Bw, partially compensated the signal loss due to the small pixel size by increasing the signal-to-noise ratio, without scan time penalty. The chemical shift artifact associated with reduced Bw was not observed because fat signal is negligible in the brain.