GE 3T Keck Protocol Development

High Contrast & Quantitative UTE Imaging in the Spine

MRI Protocol Objectives

  1. High contrast UTE imaging of the cartilaginous endplate (CEP) and cortical bone.

  2. Quantitative UTE imaging of the spine using UTE-T2, UTE-MT, UTE-tricomponent and UTE-multicompartment imaging.

Example MR Images

../_images/ma_spine_dev_1.png

Protocol Parameter Overview

../_images/ma_spine_dev_2.png

Protocol Steps

  1. Set up the spine coil. Imaging with feet first and using coil elements 4-6 for all the scans.

  2. The imaging planes of all the sequences are labeled in the names, except for the localizers.

Patient Positioning

  1. Position the patient in the feet-first, supine position on the scanner bed.

  2. Align the top of the anterior superior iliac spine with the central region of coil elements 4 and 5.

  3. Place a bolster pad under the knees.

Physiological Gating

Not applicable

Post-Processing Support

Dr. Yajun Ma and his research team can provide customized MATLAB code for data processing.

Contact: Yajun Ma - yam013@health.ucsd.edu

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Dr. Yajun Ma and his team for their effort in developing this exciting protocol on the GE MR750 3T Keck MRI scanner at the UCSD CFMRI.