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Acoustic noise reduction in T 1- and proton-density-weighted turbo spin-echo imaging

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Abstract

Objective

To reduce acoustic noise levels in T 1-weighted and proton-density-weighted turbo spin-echo (TSE) sequences, which typically reach acoustic noise levels up to 100 dB(A) in clinical practice.

Materials and methods

Five acoustic noise reduction strategies were combined: (1) gradient ramps and shapes were changed from trapezoidal to triangular, (2) variable-encoding-time imaging was implemented to relax the phase-encoding gradient timing, (3) RF pulses were adapted to avoid the need for reversing the polarity of the slice-rewinding gradient, (4) readout bandwidth was increased to provide more time for gradient activity on other axes, (5) the number of slices per TR was reduced to limit the total gradient activity per unit time. We evaluated the influence of each measure on the acoustic noise level, and conducted in vivo measurements on a healthy volunteer. Sound recordings were taken for comparison.

Results

An overall acoustic noise reduction of up to 16.8 dB(A) was obtained by the proposed strategies (1–4) and the acquisition of half the number of slices per TR only. Image quality in terms of SNR and CNR was found to be preserved.

Conclusions

The proposed measures in this study allowed a threefold reduction in the acoustic perception of T 1-weighted and proton-density-weighted TSE sequences compared to a standard TSE-acquisition. This could be achieved without visible degradation of image quality, showing the potential to improve patient comfort and scan acceptability.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Center for Magnetic-Resonance-Bavaria, Am Hubland, 97074, Würzburg, Germany

    Martin Ott, Martin Blaimer & Felix Breuer

  2. Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany

    David Grodzki & Björn Heismann

  3. Department of Experimental Physics 5, University of Wuerzburg, Würzburg, Germany

    Peter Jakob

Authors
  1. Martin Ott
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  2. Martin Blaimer
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  3. Felix Breuer
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  4. David Grodzki
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  5. Björn Heismann
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  6. Peter Jakob
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Martin Ott.

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Conflict of interest

Drs. Grodzki and Heismann are employees of Siemens Healthcare. All other authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Informed consent was obtained from all volunteers included in the study.

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Ott, M., Blaimer, M., Breuer, F. et al. Acoustic noise reduction in T 1- and proton-density-weighted turbo spin-echo imaging. Magn Reson Mater Phy 29, 5–15 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-015-0502-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-015-0502-7

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