A GENERAL-APPROACH TO ERROR ESTIMATION AND OPTIMIZED EXPERIMENT DESIGN, APPLIED TO MULTISLICE IMAGING OF T-1 IN HUMAN BRAIN AT 4.1 T

In this report, a procedure to optimize inversion-recovery times, in o rder to minimize the uncertainty in the measured T-1 from 2-point mult islice images of the human brain at 4.1 T, is discussed. The 2-point, 40-slice measurement employed inversion-recovery delays chosen based o n the minimization of noise-based uncertainties. For comparison of the measured T-1 values and uncertainties, 10-point, 3-slice measurements were also acquired. The measured T-1 values using the 2-point method were 814, 1361, and 3386 ms for white matter, gray matter, and cerebra l spinal fluid, respectively, in agreement with the respective T-1 val ues of 817, 1329, and 3320 ms obtained using the 10-point measurement. The 2-point, 40-slice method was used to determine the T-1 in the cor tical gray matter, cerebellar gray matter, caudate nucleus, cerebral p eduncle, globus pallidus, colliculus, lenticular nucleus, base of the pens, substantia nigra, thalamus, white matter, corpus callosum, and i nternal capsule. (C) 1997 Academic Press.