Separation of Sodium Signals Between Mono- and Bi-Exponential T2 Decays via Multi-TE Single-Quantum Sodium (23Na) MRI

Purpose. It is a long standing pursuit in sodium (23Na) MRI to separate signals between mono and bi exponential T2 decays in the human brain, due to lack of clinically translational solutions under the restriction of intrinsically low signal to noise ratio (SNR). Here we propose a new technique called multi TE single quantum (MSQ) sodium MRI to address the challenge. Methods. We exploit an intrinsic difference in T2 decay between mono and bi exponential sodium signals by acquiring SQ images at multiple TEs and performing voxel based matrix inversions on these SQ images. The MSQ method was then investigated on numerical models, agar phantoms, and human brains for the feasibility on clinical scanners at 3T. Results. The whole brain T2* spectrum of FID signals from the study subjects showed sparse peaks (2 to 4 peaks), suggesting a global set of T2* values (T2*fr, T2*bs, T2*bl) applicable to the separation. The simulations indicated a small impact (3.9 to 5.6 percent) of T2* variation on accuracy of the separation, and the phantom experiments showed a high accuracy of the separation, 95.8 percent for mono T2 sodium and 72.5 to 80.4 percent for biT2 sodium. The human studies demonstrated feasibility of the separation and potentials of highlighting abnormal brain regions in the biT2 sodium images. Conclusion. The MSQ technique has been shown, via the numerical simulations, phantom experiments, and human brain studies, to be able to separate mono and bi T2 sodium signals using a two TE sampling scheme and a global set of T2* values. However, MSQ has limitations and requires cautions in practice. Keywords. sodium MRI, single quantum MRI, triple quantum MRI, neuroimaging, neurodegeneration