부산대학교 도서관

PURPOSE:: To quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate the water-signal performance of the consistent intensity inhomogeneity correction (CIIC) method to correct for intensity inhomogeneities METHODS:: Water–fat volumes were acquired using 1.5 Tesla (T) and 3.0T symmetrically sampled 2-point Dixon three-dimensional MRI. Two datasets: (i) 10 muscle tissue regions of interest (ROIs) from 10 subjects acquired with both 1.5T and 3.0T whole-body MRI. (ii) Seven liver tissue ROIs from 36 patients imaged using 1.5T MRI at six time points after Gd-EOB-DTPA injection. The performance of CIIC was evaluated quantitatively by analyzing its impact on the dispersion and bias of the water image ROI intensities, and qualitatively using side-by-side image comparisons. RESULTS:: CIIC significantly () decreased the nonphysiological intensity variance while preserving the average intensity levels. The side-by-side comparisons showed improved intensity consistency () while not introducing artifacts () nor changed appearances ().(Figure is included in full-text article.)(Figure is included in full-text article.)(Figure is included in full-text article.)(Figure is included in full-text article.) CONCLUSION:: CIIC improves the spatiotemporal intensity consistency in regions of a homogenous tissue type. J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2015;42:468–476.