Holtås S L, Plewes D B, Simon J H, Ekholm S, Kido D K, Utz R
Department of Diagnostic Radiology, University of Rochester Medical Center, New York 14642.
Acta Radiol. 1987 Jul-Aug;28(4):375-81.
Technical aspects on surface coil magnetic resonance imaging of the spine using a superconducting system with a field strength of 1.5 tesla are described. By using a flat surface coil instead of the body coil the image quality was markedly improved and the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) was increased approximately 2.6 times. Small voxels resulted in low S/N. The best image quality was achieved with a slice thickness of 5 mm, a field of view of 20 to 24 cm and a matrix of 256 X 256. Interleaved slices provided superior image quality compared with contiguous slices at the expense of acquisition time. For sagittal images the phase encoding gradient should be in the cranio-caudal direction to minimize motion artifacts. To obtain T1 and T2 images of high quality, spin echo pulse sequences with TR 600/TE 20 ms and TR 2000/TE 40 to 80 ms are useful.
