The ultrastructure of bone using selective saturation in SWIFT at 9.4 T

INTRODUCTION In musculoskeletal imaging there is an abundance of intrinsic water and fat interfaces leading to problems of image blurring. SWIFT (Sweep Imaging with Fourier Transform) [1] is a novel imaging sequence having virtually zero TE and is well suited for musculoskeletal applications. However SWIFT, as well as other radial acquisition methods are prone to chemical shift blurring artifact. Here we introduce a selective fat/water acquisition strategy in SWIFT and demonstrate the suppression of the blurring effect due to fat/water interfaces. Selectively saturated SWIFT images show resolved bone ultrastructure including lamellar bone organisation, tendon-cortical bone interface and trabeculae.