Myelin and cortical bone short-T2 quantification using saturation and diffusion-based long-T2 suppression in a steady-state 3D-UTE sequence

Imaging of the very-short T2 tissues in the head is challenging in that the signals decay very rapidly (T2 < 1 ms), as well as their signal quantity being often overwhelmed by long-T2 relaxing components (fat, free-water). In this work, we explore the feasibility of short-T2 quantification in the white matter and in the cortical bone using a novel method for long-T2 suppression based on diffusion and coherence effects in a steady-state 3D-UTE sequence.