T1 quantification with inversion recovery TrueFISP

A snapshot FLASH sequence can be used to acquire the time course of longitudinal magnetization during its recovery after a single inversion pulse. However, excitation pulses disturb the exponential recovery of longitudinal magnetization and may produce systematic errors in T-1 estimations. In this context the possibility of using the TrueFISP sequence to detect the recovery of longitudinal magnetization for quantitative T-1 measurements was examined. Experiments were performed on different Gd-doped water phantoms and on humans. T-1 values derived from inversion recovery TrueFISP were in excellent agreement with the single-point method even for flip angles up to 50 degrees. In terms of T-1 accuracy and SNR, the proposed method seems to be superior to the conventional inversion recovery snapshot FLASH technique. Magn Reson Med 45:720-723, 2001. (C) 2001 Wiley-Liss, Inc.