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Technical Article
Effect of signal intensity inhomogeneity correction on quantitative susceptibility mapping of brain
GAN Fengling  QU Zheng  ZHAO Weiwei  ZHONG Haodong  LI Gaiying  LI Jianqi 

Cite this article as: Gan FL, Qu Z, Zhao WW, et al. Effect of signal intensity inhomogeneity correction on quantitative susceptibility mapping of brain[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2022, 13(4): 94-99. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2022.04.017.


[Abstract] Objective To evaluate the effects of coil selection and signal intensity inhomogeneity on the susceptibility values of deep gray matter nuclei measured by quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM).Materials and Methods Ten healthy subjects were scanned on a 2.89 T MRI system using 20- and 64-channel combined head-neck coils. QSM reconstructions were performed before and after correcting signal intensity inhomogeneity of the original gradient-echo images, respectively. Six bilateral deep cerebral gray matter nuclei were manually drawn on susceptibility maps, including red nucleus, substantia nigra, globus pallidus, putamen, caudate nucleus, and dentate nucleus. Paired sample t test, linear correlation analysis and Bland-Altman analysis were used to compare the differences and consistency of susceptibility values between groups with and without intensity inhomogeneity correction using different coils.Results The susceptibility maps with intensity inhomogeneity correction demonstrated improved boundaries of deep gray matter nuclei and susceptibility values increased significantly. The mean susceptibility values of deep gray matter nuclei after correction were highly correlated with those before correction (20-channel: slope K=1.06, R2=0.96; 64-channel: slope K=1.12, R2=0.95). The mean susceptibility values of deep gray matter nuclei from 20-channel coil were highly correlated with those from 64-channel coil (without correction: slope K=0.92, R2=0.96; with correction: slope K=0.98, R2=0.96). There was no statistically significant difference in the mean susceptibility values between the 20- and 64-channel coils acquisition after correcting the intensity inhomogeneity. Bland-Altman results showed no significant deviation between the 20- and 64-channel coils acquisition after the correction on the intensity inhomogeneity.Conclusions The signal intensity inhomogeneity affects the susceptibility values of the deep brain nuclei, and inhomogeneity correction can improve the accuracy of susceptibility values of deep gray matter nuclei.
[Keywords] quantitative susceptibility mapping;intensity inhomogeneity correction;coil;deep gray matter nuclei;magnetic resonance imaging

GAN Fengling1   QU Zheng2   ZHAO Weiwei1   ZHONG Haodong1   LI Gaiying1   LI Jianqi1*  

1 Shanghai Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance, School of Physics and Electronic Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China

2 West China School of Medicine/West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China

Li JQ, E-mail: jqli@phy.ecnu.edu.cn

Conflicts of interest   None.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Social Science Foundation of China (No. 15ZDB016).
Received  2021-11-11
Accepted  2022-03-25
DOI: 10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2022.04.017
Cite this article as: Gan FL, Qu Z, Zhao WW, et al. Effect of signal intensity inhomogeneity correction on quantitative susceptibility mapping of brain[J]. Chin J Magn Reson Imaging, 2022, 13(4): 94-99. DOI:10.12015/issn.1674-8034.2022.04.017.

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