Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction :
Artifacts are parts of reconstructed images that are not present in the true anatomy. Artifacts are dependent on a variety of factors from patient movement to magnetic field in homogeneities. Artifacts can lead to misdiagnosis if they are not recognized and/or removed. Ideally, we want all image artifacts to be below the level of user's perception.
Sources :
Hardware Issues e.g. calibration, power stability
Software problems e.g. programming errors Physiological phenomena e.g. blood flow Physics limitations e.g. Gibbs and susceptibility
Types of Artifacts
Chemical Shift Artifact Aliasing Truncation Artifact Zipper Artifact Motion Artifacts (Phase direction) Field in homogeneity Slice-overlap Artifact RF Overflow Artifact Eddy Current Artifacts
Aliasing (or)Wrap-around
Correction:
Increase the FOV (decreases resolution).
Oversampling the data in the frequency direction (standard) and increasing phase steps in the phaseencoded direction phase compensation (time or SNR penalty).
Swapping phase and frequency direction so phase is in the narrower direction. Use surface coil so no signal detected outside of FOV.
Remedy :
By Scanning at lower field strengths and by keeping FOV to a minimum. Using widest receive bandwidth in keeping with good SNR and the smallest FOV possible.
Coronal T1 weighted gradient echo images of the posterior abdomen acquired on 1.5 T system. Left acquired with TE of 2.8ms Right acquired with TE of 4.2ms Arrow shows Chemical misregistration artifact.
Chemical shift artifact resulting from the presence of subcutaneous scalp fat. (a) Axial T1-weighted image of the brain shows the propagation of chemical shift artifact (arrows) along the frequency encoding axis, in the anteroposterior direction. (b) Axial T1- weighted image obtained with use of a higher bandwidth sampling rate and with acquisition time increased to allow a relatively constant SNR shows reduction of the chemical shift artifact.
Axial T2 weighted images of the abdomen Using a receive bandwidth of 32000 Hz (above) Using a receive bandwidth of 8000 Hz (below) The arrow shows the chemical shift artifact at the border of the left kidney
Truncation Artifact
Results from under sampling of data. Interfaces of high and low signals are incorrectly represented on the Image. Common site for this kind of artifact is T1 sagittal imaging of Cervical spine. Due to Low signal of CSF and high signal from Spinal cord. (Gibbs artifact) Occurs only in Phase direction only.
Remedy
Under sampling of data must be avoided. Increase the number of phase encoding steps Using 256 X 256 matrix instead of 256 x 128.
Sagittal gradient echo sequence of the knee. Magnetic susceptibility artifact from screws degrades the image.
Zipper Artifact
Appears as a dense line on the image at a specific point.
Caused by extraneous RF entering the room at a certain frequency and interfering with the inherently weak signal coming from the patient.
Caused by a leak in the RF shielding of the room.
Remedy
To locate the leak and repair it.
Zipper Artifacts
Shading is an artifact which produces a loss of signal intensity in one part of image. Due to uneven excitation of nuclei with in the patient due to RF pulses applied at flip angles other than 90 and 180 degrees. Caused by abnormal loading on the coil or by coupling of the coil at one point. Occurs with large patient, who touches one side of the body coil and couples it at that point.
Shading Artifact
Remedy
Ensure coil is loaded correctly. Patient not touching the coil at any point.
Axial T1-weighted MR images without (a) and with (b) a significant ghosting artifact due to patient motion. Motion-related artifacts typically are propagated in the phase encoding directionin b, along the horizontal axis.
Comparison of axial T2-weighted spin-echo (a) and fast spin echo (b) MR images of the brain at the level of the pons shows higher spatial resolution in b, which was obtained with an impressive reduction in acquisition time (2 minutes 22seconds, compared with 12 minutes 48 seconds for a). The higher signal intensity of per orbital fat in b is an effect of J coupling and other factors.
Axial images of the Chest Without ECG gating (above) With ECG gating (below) Anatomical detail of heart is demonstrated clearly on gated image
Axial T1 weighted images of the abdomen With out respiratory compensation (above) With respiratory compensation (below) The ghosting arrow has been reduced on the lower image.
Example: Two groups of non-parallel slices in the same sequence, e.g., L4-5 and L5-S1. The level acquired second will include spins that have already been saturated.
Slice-overlap Artifacts
Slice-overlap Artifacts
Correction: Avoid steep change in angle between slice groups. Use separate acquisitions. Use small flip angle, i.e. GE sequence
Metallic Artifacts
Similar
to susceptibility artifacts.
Examples of artifacts due to presence of stainless steel screws in healthy 37-year-old man. A and B, In gradient-echo image with 62.5 kHz receive bandwidth (A) and spin-echo image with 16 kHz receive bandwidth (B), solid arrows show signal loss that can be due to dephasing or from signal being shifted away from region. Dotted arrow in B shows geometric distortion of femoral condoyle, and dashed arrows show signal pile-up, which can be combination of in-plane and through-slice displacement of signal from multiple locations to one location.
Cross-talk Artifact
Result of imperfect slice excitation, i.e. nonrectangular, of adjacent slices causing reduction in signal over entire image. May be reduced by using gap, interleaving slices and optimized (but longer) rf pulses.
Cross-talk Artifact
Field inhomogeneity
Types: Main magnetic field RF coil inhomogeneity Dielectric effects worst at 3T+
May cause variation in intensity across image May cause non-uniform fat suppression
Field inhomogeneity Bo
Field inhomogeneity
Coil Use volume vs. surface coil, allow space between coil and body. Dielectric use phased array coils, software compensation
RF Overflow Artifacts
Thank You