High spatial resolution quantitative MR images: an experimental study of dedicated surface coils

Measuring spin-spin relaxation times (T2) by quantitative MR imaging represents a potentially efficient tool to evaluate the physicochemical properties of various media. However, noise in MR images is responsible for uncertainties in the determination of T2 relaxation times, which limits the accuracy of parametric tissue analysis. The required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) depends on the T2 relaxation behaviour specific to each tissue. Thus, we have previously shown that keeping the uncertainty in T2 measurements within a limit of 10% implies that SNR values be greater than 100 and 300 for mono- and biexponential T2 relaxation behaviours, respectively. Noise reduction can be obtained either by increasing the voxel size (i.e., at the expense of spatial resolution) or by using high sensitivity dedicated surface coils (which allows us to increase SNR without deteriorating spatial resolution in an excessive manner). However, surface coil sensitivity is heterogeneous, i.e., it--and hence SNR--decreases with increasing depth, and the more so as the coil radius is smaller. The use of surface coils is therefore limited to the analysis of superficial structure such as the hypodermic tissue analysed here. The aim of this work was to determine the maximum limits of spatial resolution and depth compatible with reliable in vivo T2 quantitative MR images using dedicated surface coils available on various clinical MR scanners. The average thickness of adipose tissue is around 15 mm, and the results obtained have shown that obtaining reliable biexponential relaxation analysis requires a minimum achievable voxel size of 13 mm3 for a conventional volume birdcage coil and only of 1.7 mm3 for the smallest available surface coil (23 mm in diameter). Further improvement in spatial resolution allowing us to detect low details in MR images without deteriorating parametric T2 images can be obtained by image filtering. By using the non-linear selective blurring filter described in a previous work, the voxel size was reduced to 0.8 mm3, allowing us to detect microstructures such as fibrous septae while preserving precision in T2 measurements. This paper provides practical information allowing us to perform reliable T2 quantitative MR micro images. High resolution imaging with dedicated surface coils, which is only well-suited to near surface organs, might lead to highly valuable results in this context, especially to analyse the hypodermis involved in the lipodystrophy seen in patients with human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV).