Improvement of the image quality of T1-weighted anatomical brain scans

Abstract

T1-weighted anatomical brain scans are routinely used in neuroimaging studies, for example, as anatomical reference for functional data and in brain morphometry studies. Subject motion can degrade the quality of these images. An additional problem is the occurrence of signal dropouts in the case of long echo times and low receiver bandwidths. These problems are addressed in two different studies. In the first study, it is shown that the high scalp signal, which results from the low T1 value of fat, may cause a typical ringing artefact in the presence of head motion. This problem may be enhanced if phased array coils are used for signal reception due to their increased sensitivity in the peripheral head regions. It is shown that this artefact can be avoided by combining certain fat suppression techniques that reduce the scalp signal. In the second study, it is shown that signal dropout affects mainly the orbitofrontal cortex and the temporal lobes, and that a bandwidth of 100 Hz/pixel should be chosen for the investigation of these areas to avoid signal losses while maintaining an acceptable signal-to-noise ratio. Experimental results are based on the MDEFT sequence but can be applied to other T1-weighted sequences like FLASH and MP-RAGE. Furthermore, the presented methods for improving the image quality can be combined with other artefact reduction techniques.