title: Are mono-exponential fits to a few echoes sufficient to determine T2 relaxation for in vivo human brain?
abstract: T2 relaxation decay curves from in vivo human brain tissue are rarely mono-exponential. Partial volume averaging further reduces the chance of mono-exponential decay. Moreover, the parameters derived from few-echo mono-exponential fits change with the measurement echo times and have the largest possible variance. In this note, multi-exponential fits to 32-echo relaxation decay curves from in vivo human brain are used to design simulations (where the truth is known) to demonstrate the pitfalls of few-echo mono-exponential interpretations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
authors.forename: K P
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: Whittall
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: MacKay
authors.forename: D K
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D009103:Multiple Sclerosis / Q000473:pathology*