Application of Multi-exponential Relaxation Techniques in Neuroimaging

Purpose: To separate various water or fat/water compartments in respect to their longitudinal or transverse relaxation properties can gain new insights in diagnostic imaging of neurodegenerative and other diseases. For example, imaging the short T2-component of water trapped between the myelin sheaths of mammals' central nervous system requires high coherent echo phase and SNR on the multi-echo readout sequence. The conventional multi-echo T2-relaxation technique is based on a single slice CPMG-sequence with composite refocusing pulses and alternating crusher gradients around the refocusing pulses [1,2]. Only on…