title: Phantom materials for single point imaging pulse sequences.
abstract: The popularity of pure phase encode MRI techniques, including single point imaging (SPI), is steadily increasing, particularly in instances where the samples of interest are solid-like, or for other reasons possess short effective transverse relaxation times, T2*. As the interest in these techniques grows, so too does the need for a phantom material which is representative of this class of samples. The characteristics of such a phantom should include chemical and physical stability, straightforward preparation, high signal to noise ratio and relaxation times which are both easily manipulated and representative. To this end, we have developed a gelatin/sucrose-based gel which addresses the above criteria and behaves as a very flexible short T2* phantom. An order of magnitude variation in T1 and T2 can be achieved over a reasonable range of sucrose concentration. Even larger changes can be achieved with the addition of further doping agents.
authors.affiliation: UNB MRI Center, Physics Department, University of New Brunswick, 8 Bailey Drive, P.O. Box 4400, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada E3B 5A3. bryce@unb.ca
authors.forename: Bryce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: MacMillan
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Burke
authors.forename: Bruce
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Balcom
authors.forename: Greg
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Ziegler