Diagonal-SPRITE and Its Applications for In Vivo Imaging at High Field

Many solid or semi-solid tissues have ultra-short or short T2* components that make them virtually “invisible” to standard MRI techniques. For this reason, methods such as ultra-short echo time (UTE) techniques were developed to investigate and detect some of these short and ultra-short time components. Here we report on the development and implementation of a novel version of the Single Point Ramped Imaging with T1 Enhancement (SPRITE) technique in order to image mouse models. The method, called diagonal-SPRITE, was optimized within hardware limitations such as duty cycle and gradient strength at high field. Preliminary in vivo MR T2* value of organs of normal mouse models and related T2* maps were generated. In addition, the sequence was applied to highlight stomach short T2* after the application of a long T2* suppression pulse and to achieve a positive contrast in a SPIO-labelled cells experiment.