What are normal relaxation times of tissues at 3 T?

• Published in: Magnetic resonance imaging Vol. 35; pp. 69 - 80
• Main Authors: Bojorquez, Jorge Zavala, Bricq, Stéphanie, Acquitter, Clement, Brunotte, François, Walker, Paul M., Lalande, Alain
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier Inc 01.01.2017
• Subjects: 3 tesla; Humans; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted - methods; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Radiology; Relaxation times; Time; 3 tesla; T1; Relaxation times; T2; T 1; T 2; T
• ISSN: 0730-725X; 1873-5894; 1873-5894
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mri.2016.08.021

The T1 and T2 relaxation times are the basic parameters behind magnetic resonance imaging. The accurate knowledge of the T1 and T2 values of tissues allows to perform quantitative imaging and to develop and optimize magnetic resonance sequences. A vast extent of methods and sequences has been developed to calculate the T1 and T2 relaxation times of different tissues in diverse centers. Surprisingly, a wide range of values has been reported for similar tissues (e.g. T1 of white matter from 699 to 1735ms and T2 of fat from 41 to 371ms), and the true values that represent each specific tissue are still unclear, which have deterred their common use in clinical diagnostic imaging. This article presents a comprehensive review of the reported relaxation times in the literature in vivo at 3T for a large span of tissues. It gives a detailed analysis of the different methods and sequences used to calculate the relaxation times, and it explains the reasons of the spread of reported relaxation times values in the literature.