What are normal relaxation times of tissues at 3 T?
Abstract
The T 1 and T 2 relaxation times are the basic parameters behind magnetic resonance imaging. The accurate knowledge of the T 1 and T 2 values of tissues allows to perform quantitative imaging and to develop and optimize magnetic resonance sequences. A vast extent of methods and sequences has been developed to calculate the T 1 and T 2 relaxation times of different tissues in diverse centers. Surprisingly, a wide range of values has been reported for similar tissues (e.g. T 1 of white matter from 699 to 1735ms and T 2 of fat from 41 to 371ms), and the true values that represent each specific tissue are still unclear, which have deterred their common use in clinical diagnostic imaging. This article presents a comprehensive review of the reported relaxation times in the literature in vivo at 3T for a large span of tissues. It gives a detailed analysis of the different methods and sequences used to calculate the relaxation times, and it explains the reasons of the spread of reported relaxation times values in the literature.
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An overview of deep learning in medical imaging focusing on MRI
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- Authors
- Bojorquez, J. Z., Bricq, S., Acquitter, C., Brunotte, F., Walker, P. M., & Lalande, A.
- Affiliations
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Corresponding author
- Lalande, Alain
- Venue
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2017-01
- Volume
- 35
- Pages
- 69-80
- ISSN
- 0730-725X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2507707535
- Cited by
- 286
- References
- 59
- Citations by year
- 2026: 25 · 2025: 36 · 2024: 48 · 2023: 35 · 2022: 35 · 2021: 36 · 2020: 27 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 7
- FWCI
- 2.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Advanced MRI Techniques and Applications
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging › Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Nuclear and High Energy Physics › NMR spectroscopy and applications
- Keywords
- T1 relaxation time, T2 relaxation time, tissue relaxation times, 3T MRI, quantitative MRI, white matter, fats, inter-laboratory variability
- MeSH terms
- Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Time
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