Fig. 3
Results of the phantom experiments. In A, calculated relaxation time maps using the monoexponential model and the corrected model are compared. The increase in T1ρ* with Trec can be seen visually. The measured T1ρ* values agree well with theoretically predicted values (B). The mean deviation from the prediction for the phantoms with increasing BSA concentration was 0.47%, 0.84% and 1.38%. The corrected fit, on the other hand, delivers nearly constant results. This is confirmed in the ROI based evaluation in B and C. The highest deviations arise in the phantom with the longest T1 relaxation time. Corrected fitting reduced the quantification error averaged over all measurements from -7.4% to -0.97%. The errors in the corrected fit could result from incorrect values of T1, Trec, or α. The R2 values are generally higher for the corrected fit (> 0.999). However, for monoexponential fitting, R2 values > 0.996 were achieved despite high quantification errors