Chuan Huang1, Jean-Philipper Galons2, Maria I. Altbach2
1Mathematics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States; 2Radiology, University of Arizona
T2 estimation has proven to be a valuable tool in the characterization of liver lesions. Because of the partial volume effect, it is particularly challenging to obtain T2 values of lesions with diameters smaller than 15 mm. In this work we present a joint bi-exponential fitting (JBF) algorithm combined with a principal component based reconstruction algorithm to obtain accurate T2 estimates with partial volume correction. The method, which utilizes highly undersampled radial data acquired in a single breath hold, is demonstrated in phantoms and in vivo.