MR imaging of hemorrhage: The new approach

Recently it has been reported that MR imaging is capable of uniquely identifying hemorrhage on the basis of magnetic susceptibility effects. It has been claimed that these effects are well detected only on high-field MR imaging, particularly in acute hemorrhage. An inability to detect these effects on lower field images would, of course, be a significant drawback to the use of intermediate- and low-field systems. The authors have developed a new method that permits the acquisition of highly T1- and T2-weighted images of the head and body in as little as 10 seconds, using a modification of the partial saturation pulse sequence. Using this technique in a series of six patients with acute and subacute hemorrhage, they have shown that intermediate-field imaging is exquisitely sensitive to the magnetic susceptibility effects of hemorrhage, perhaps more so than high-field imaging with conventional spin-echo pulse sequences. The results suggest that high-field systems are not needed in order to image hemorrhage