Fig. 3.

Example of one healthy volunteer's T1rho maps constructed with 6 SLTs, 3 SLTs or 2 SLTs. Left column: coefficient of determination (R²) maps, middle column: T1rho maps without R² evaluation, right column: T1rho maps with R² > 0.8 evaluation. Upper row: maps constructed with 6 SLTs, middle row: maps constructed with 3 SLTs, lower row: maps constructed with 2 SLTs. As SLT point decreases, R² evaluation is less efficient to remove blood vessel contamination and artifact. Note that R² is always equal to one, when SLT point = 2, so no pixels are excluded by criteria of R² > 0.8. However, this does not seem to affect regions of interest placement, according to results in Table 1. Radiology trainee was able to identify and avoid regions with artifacts and blood vessels. SLT = spin-lock time