Methodological Developments for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)

Image quality criteria will be :

• Signal to Noise Ratio and Contrast to Noise Ratio measured in arbitrary units.
• absence of blurring and artefacts will be assessed by at least one radiologist according to an ordinal scale

For quantitative studies such as T1/T2 studies a T1/T2 quantification will be calculated. These parameters will be reported in ms.

For functional MRI studies, brain activity will be described in terms of brain localisation based on blood oxygen level-dependent signal variation and its intensity.

For cardiac imaging, cardiac function will be evaluated. Parameters such as left ventricle (LV) and right ventricle (RV) end-diastolic volumes end-systolic volumes will be measured and reported in mL/m².

For cardiac imaging, cardiac function will be evaluated. LV and RV mass index will be measured and reported in g/m2.

For cardiac imaging, cardiac function will be evaluated. Ejection fraction for both ventricles will be calculated and reported in %.

For diffusion studies, the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) whic is a measure of the magnitude of diffusion (of water molecules) within tissue will be estimated (mm2/s).

The fractional anisotropy (FA) which is a scalar value between zero and one, which describes the degree of anisotropy of a diffusion process, could also be estimated.