{"doi":"10.1002/mrm.29141","title":"Optimization of magnetization transfer contrast for EPI FLAIR brain imaging","abstract":"PURPOSE: To evaluate the impact of magnetization transfer (MT) on brain tissue contrast in turbo-spin-echo (TSE) and EPI fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) images, and to optimize an MT-prepared EPI FLAIR pulse sequence to match the tissue contrast of a clinical reference TSE FLAIR protocol. METHODS: Five healthy volunteers underwent 3T brain MRI, including single slice TSE FLAIR, multi-slice TSE FLAIR, EPI FLAIR without MT-preparation, and MT-prepared EPI FLAIR with variations of the MT-preparation parameters, including number of preparation pulses, pulse amplitude, and resonance offset. Automated co-registration and gray matter (GM) versus white matter (WM) segmentation was performed using a T1-MPRAGE acquisition, and the GM versus WM signal intensity ratio (contrast ratio) was calculated for each FLAIR acquisition. RESULTS: Without MT preparation, EPI FLAIR showed poor tissue contrast (contrast ratio = 0.98), as did single slice TSE FLAIR. Multi-slice TSE FLAIR provided high tissue contrast (contrast ratio = 1.14). MT-prepared EPI FLAIR closely approximated the contrast of the multi-slice TSE FLAIR images for two combinations of the MT-preparation parameters (contrast ratio = 1.14). Optimized MT-prepared EPI FLAIR provided a 50% reduction in scan time compared to the reference TSE FLAIR acquisition. CONCLUSION: Optimized MT-prepared EPI FLAIR provides comparable brain tissue contrast to the multi-slice TSE FLAIR images used in clinical practice.","journal":"Magnetic Resonance in Medicine","year":2022,"id":262827,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":13,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.7692,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":379443,"name":"Bryan Clifford","orcid":"0000-0002-1966-0581","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":364090,"name":"Wei‐Ching Lo","orcid":"0000-0002-1893-0500","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":314187,"name":"Azadeh Tabari","orcid":"0000-0002-5685-6401","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":364086,"name":"Augusto Lio M. Gonçalves Filho","orcid":"0000-0002-5092-2754","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":256383,"name":"Min Lang","orcid":"0000-0002-3895-5342","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":241412,"name":"Stephen Cauley","orcid":"0000-0002-6147-6016","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":263269,"name":"Kawin Setsompop","orcid":"0000-0003-0455-7634","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":263263,"name":"Berkin Bilgic̦","orcid":"0000-0002-9080-7865","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":241417,"name":"Michael H. Lev","orcid":"0000-0003-0236-7319","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":307822,"name":"Pamela W. Schaefer","orcid":"0000-0002-4222-6134","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":226557,"name":"Otto Rapalino","orcid":"0000-0002-5038-4183","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":263270,"name":"Susie Y. Huang","orcid":"0000-0003-2950-7254","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":918759,"name":"Tom Hilbert","orcid":"0000-0001-8207-4908","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":723100,"name":"Thorsten Feiweier","orcid":"0009-0005-3537-9844","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":364087,"name":"John Conklin","orcid":"0000-0001-9921-2086","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":723766,"name":"Serdest Demir","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":17,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:26:25.074177Z","pmid":"34985151","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}