title: Bi-exponential T2 decay in dairy cream phantoms.
abstract: MRI phantoms are an important part of any experiment because they provide a reference of known parameters. There are many choices of mono-exponential T2 phantoms, but few choices for bi-exponential T2 phantoms. We have found that dairy cream provides an excellent bi-exponential T2 model with similar relaxation times to those found in white matter. Five cream phantoms of different milk fat percentages (2, 6, 10, 18 and 35 %) were imaged with an optimized Carr-Purcell-Meiboom-Gill sequence. The decay curves for each of the phantoms were fit using Non-Negative Least Squares. We found that the short T2 component fraction relative to the total energy in the distribution correlated linearly (r = 0.9973) with the milk fat percentage. The short T2 time was 38+/-4 ms and the long T2 time was 135+/-4 ms.
authors.affiliation: Tom Lawson Family Imaging Research Labs, John P. Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: MacKay
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rutt
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D003611:Dairy Products; D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D016018:Least-Squares Analysis; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging