Myelin Water Imaging on MAGNUS (high-performance Mesoscale Anatomy Gradient for Neuroimaging with Ultrafast Scanning) system

Motivation: Myelin water fraction (MWF) is conventionally measured using the T2 decay curve. Due to hardware limitations, for spin-echo based sequences, TR and TE times were restricted by SAR and gradient slew rate. Goal(s): Our objective is to reduce the total scan time by shortening the TR time. A shorter TE time should also capture more signal from the short T2 components of myelin water. Approach: We implemented myelin water imaging (MWI) on the MAGNUS system with reduced TR and TE times. Results: When implemented on the MAGNUS system, MWI could be carried out in a shorter time and the MWF were slightly larger. Impact: The work aims to optimize MWI by shortening scan times. It successfully achieves this, leading to quicker, high-quality MWI acquisition, benefiting medical diagnostics and research efficiency.