As in the 2D sequence, there are two acquisitions, which will be added together to measure the slice that has been

selected. Both acquisitions are Fourier transformed to show the real signal as an absorption peak and the imaginary signal as a dispersion peak. These can be added together to achieve a purely real Gaussian excitation. The slice measurement selleck sequence is used to ensure accurate timing of the r.f. excitation and slice select gradient, such that these end simultaneously. A pure phase encode method was also tested for imaging the slice selection. The results were equivalent. The slice bandwidth was measured from the full width at half of the maximum (FWHM) of the real excitation profile. The absolute value could also be used for the optimized acquisition as the imaginary signal is zero. The measured slice bandwidth was used to calculate the slice thickness in subsequent UTE imaging experiments. Four samples are used in this study. A homogeneous sample of doped water is used for all gradient measurements and for 1D slice selection imaging. The water is doped with 0.23 mM gadolinium chloride to give a T1 of 120 ms and a T2 of 105 ms. To test the UTE imaging sequence, two samples are used with different T2 and T2* relaxation times. The second sample was comprised of 5 mm check details glass beads randomly packed into a 20 mm inner diameter glass tube.

The glass beads were surrounded by water doped with 0.23 mM gadolinium chloride. The sample has a T1 of 690 ms, T2 of 540 ms, and a T2* of 2 ms. The third sample is composed of two rectangular pieces of cork with a T1 of 420 ms and a T2* of 0.12 ms. The T2 for the cork was too short to measure with the available hardware however is assumed to be less than 0.5 ms and likely on the order of the T2*. The fourth sample is comprised of 10 mm glass Interleukin-2 receptor beads surrounded by rubber particles (a cured blend of thermoset rubber, SoftPoint Industries Inc.).

The T2* of the rubber is approximately 75 μs and, again, it is not possible to measure T2 with the available hardware. The bead pack is used to quantify the accuracy of slice selection during imaging by providing a system on which both spin echo and UTE can be used. Cork and this rubber both have a short T2 and T2* making them impossible to image with a spin echo technique, and good candidates for UTE imaging. The development of the r.f. excitation pulse for the UTE imaging sequence started with a 1024 μs Gaussian pulse, 1500 Hz FWHM. The re-shaped VERSE excitation pulse was 537 μs in length. A slice selection gradient of 5.1 G cm−1 was used to give a 1 mm thick slice. Both r.f. and gradient pulses were switched off using a 50 μs ramp. A ring down delay of 10 μs was set before the acquisition started. The acquisition gradient strength was increased over 50 μs prior to reaching a maximum value of 10.6 G cm−1.