Temporal stability of gel relaxation-time phantoms for quality control of T1 and extracellular volume fraction measurements

Ee Ling Heng,Sonya V Babu-Narayan,David Firmin,Peter Gatehouse,Andreas Greiser,Sanjay K Prasad,Jackie Donovan,Dudley J Pennell,Michael A Gatzoulis,Vassilis Vassiliou,Shivraman Giri

doi:10.1186/1532-429x-16-s1-p60

Abstract

Background Quantification of interstitial fibrosis by T1-mapping continues to gather momentum clinically with the recognition that extracellular volume fraction (ECV) measurements are pathologically elevated in a range of conditions. Well-known dependence of ECV estimation on imaging parameters requires quality-control by T1 phantoms[1-3]. These typically comprise agarose with NiCl[2] doping,[4] and are often used short-term, but with limited long-term data[5]. Such phantoms might assure long-term stability (over years) of methods applied in patients eg against scanner alterations. We therefore sought to assess their long-term T1 and T2 stability.

Highlights

Quantification of interstitial fibrosis by T1-mapping continues to gather momentum clinically with the recognition that extracellular volume fraction (ECV) measurements are pathologically elevated in a range of conditions
Phantoms were 60 ml glass narrow-neck sealed thickwall bottles filled without gaps from gel contraction while cooling. These were kept in the MRI room and imaged weekly 10 times (Siemens, Avanto 1.5T) using consistent coil and phantom arrangement, with 11-RR MOLLI: high-resolution and lowresolution (100 bpm) versions, with pre-contrast and post-contrast variants,[6] plus spin-echo T2 (Figure 1)
Phantom mean T1 and T2 values were taken in pixelwise maps

Summary

Background

Quantification of interstitial fibrosis by T1-mapping continues to gather momentum clinically with the recognition that extracellular volume fraction (ECV) measurements are pathologically elevated in a range of conditions. Well-known dependence of ECV estimation on imaging parameters requires quality-control by T1 phantoms[1,2,3]. These typically comprise agarose with NiCl[2] doping,[4] and are often used short-term, but with limited long-term data[5]. Such phantoms might assure long-term stability (over years) of methods applied in patients eg against scanner alterations. We sought to assess their long-term T1 and T2 stability

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Messroghli