Precision and reproducibility of T2 quantifications in myocardial T2 mapping: impact of the number of echoes and reconstruction model

Background Quantitative myocardial T2 is a promising technique to assess myocardial inflammation and edema (1). Recent implementations have utilized T2-prepared (T2prep) SSFP sequences to acquire a multiple T2 weighted images at different echo times, and generate T2 maps based on a 2-parameter (2P-fit) model of T2 decay (2,3). Recently, a 3-parameter fitting (3P-fit) model was found superior to the conventional 2P-fit model, as it compensates for T1 relaxation effect, and results in more accurate T2 measurements (4). In this work, we sought to characterize the 3P-fit approach in terms of precision and reproducibility and to evaluate the influence of the number of employed T2prep echo times on these two metrics.