Open-source Multi-Spin Echo T2 Mapping Optimized for Knee Articular Cartilage

Motivation: Osteoarthritis affects one-fourth of the world's population. Interest in applying quantitative MRI (qMRI) for early detection and follow-up of this disease has grown but ensuring reproducibility of the measurements across vendors remains necessary. Goal(s): To design and optimize an Open-Source Multi-Spin-Echo (MSE) pulse sequence for standardizing T2 Knee Articular Cartilage (KAC) mapping. Approach: Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB) was used to maximize sensitivity to KAC T2 values. Repeatability tests were carried out in the NIST phantom and a pilot in vivo scan was performed. Results: Phantom results support improved specificity and demonstrate increased reproducibility over time. Pilot in vivo KAC data proves feasibility. Impact: Multi-Spin Echo sequences for T2 mapping knee articular cartilage were made available as open-source vendor-agnostic tools to enable future quantitative MRI standardization studies. NIST phantom evaluation tests suggest improved precision with the proposed optimization. Pilot in vivo data demonstrates feasibility.