CHARACTERIZATION OF AND CORRECTION FOR ARTIFACTS IN LINOGRAM MRI

Chemical shift differences, field inhomogeneity, and gradient nonlinea rity result in artifacts in magnetic resonance imaging. Three artifact s are characterized for linogram imaging and it is shown that, based o n computer simulations and theory, linogram MRI behaves similarly to 2 DFT. A correction technique similar to a scheme for 2DFT imaging based on the Dixon technique and coordinate transform methods is proposed. The algorithm is applied to correct for field inhomogeneity and gradie nt nonlinearity-induced artifacts in both simulations and images of a clinical phantom. The results show good correlation with the theory. I t is concluded that linogram imaging offers certain attractive feature s of both 2DFT and PR imaging techniques, and is a potentially viable alternative to PR imaging in the presence of field inhomogeneity.