PURPOSE: To develop an efficient MRI approach to estimate the nonwater proton fraction (f) in human brain.METHODS: We implement a brief, efficient magnetization transfer (MT) pulse that selectively saturates the magnetization of the (semi-) solid protons, and monitor the transfer of this saturation to the water protons as a function of delay after saturation.RESULTS: Analysis of the transient MT effect with two-pool model allowed robust extraction of f at both 3 and 7 T. This required estimating the longitudinal relaxation rate constant (R1,MP and R1,WP ) for both proton pools, which was achieved with the assumption of uniform R1,MP and R1,WP across brain tissues. Resulting values of f were approximately 50% higher than reported previously, which is partly attributed to MT-pulse efficiency and R1,MP being higher than assumed previously.CONCLUSION: Experiments performed on human brain in vivo at 3 and 7 T demonstrate the ability of the method to robustly determine f in a scan time of approximately 5 min. Magn Reson Med 77:2174-2185, 2017. © 2016 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.
Adult Algorithms