MR microscopy of the rat lung using projection reconstruction

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Abstract
Projection reconstruction has been implemented with self-refocused selection pulses on a small bore, 2.0 T MR microscope, to allow imaging of lung parenchyma. Scan synchronous ventilation and cardiac gating have been integrated with the sequence to minimize motion artifacts. A systematic survey of the pulse sequence parameters has been undertaken in conjunction with the biological gating parameters to optimize resolution and signal-to-noise (SNR). The resulting projection images with effective echo time of <300 usec allow definition of lung parenchyma with an SNR improvement of ∼15 x over a more conventional 2DFT short echo gradient sequence.