In this study, SNR measurement via ROI analysis was implemented. This method is quite common in acquiring SNR value from an image. In addition, this method is easy and provides a faster way to calculate the regional statistics of the SNR which can be obtained directly from the image [16, 17]. In this work, the SNR measurement method was refined using 1, 3 and 25 ROIs.
Distilled water has a distinct characteristic of T1 and T2 curves as compared to the pure agar gel and agar gels containing the relaxation modifier. Higher SNR for distilled water at any TR and TE values (see Figs. 1, 2) is attributed to a higher water content. The same argument can be used to explain a higher SNRo for distilled water tabulated in Tables 2 and 3.
Two weeks after preparation, the agar gels almost contain as much water molecules as the distilled water resulting in a small difference between them as shown by their T1 curves at TP1 (Fig. 1—top three). Over time, water content in the agar gels at TP2 decreases mainly due to evaporation, hence a decrease in intensity. The evaporation of water did occur for distilled water but the effects on SNR is more prominent for agar gel phantoms. Hence, the difference in the T1 curves of the agar gels with distilled water becomes clearer at TP2 (Fig. 1—bottom three).
In relation to the above discussion, the intensity of background noise was found to be relatively higher for the agar gels at TP1, resulting in lower SNR for distilled water and agar gels according to Eq. (1), while for the scans conducted 4 weeks after preparation (at TP2), lower background noise intensity resulted in higher SNR. The average background noise intensity and standard deviation of noise for T1 measurements are 15.083 and 2.144 at TP1. The values decrease to 12.461 and 1.466 at TP2. It can be said that a higher background noise at TP1 supersede the decrease in signal intensity at TP2, resulting in an overall higher SNR at TP2 as can be seen when comparing TP1 and TP2 on Fig. 1 (see also Eq. (1)).
For T2 curves (Fig. 2), the average background noise intensity and standard deviation of noise are 10.762 and 7.864 at TP1. At TP2, the values are 9.333 and 6.895. The small differences between these TP1 and TP2 values explain why the T2 curves are similar regardless of at which TP they were obtained. It can also be said that T2 relaxation for all agar gel phantoms and distilled water was not influenced by the water content which was assumed to be lesser at TP2.
The value of R2, also known as correlation coefficient, or the goodness of fit measures how disperse are the experimental SNR data about the fitted curve. The agar gel phantoms produce good T1 and T2 SNR uniformity at TP1 across 1, 3 and 25 ROIs which is mainly attributed to the freshness of the phantoms. Water content in all phantoms was at its initial maximum with only little being evaporated, hence no change in SNR across the image. Thus, the choice of number of ROIs is independent of SNR uniformity.
As more and more water evaporated from the phantoms’ matrix during the interval between TP1 and TP2, the signal (and noise) across the image starts to fluctuate and resulting in SNR non-uniformity. The R2 is no longer indistinguishable between number of ROIs with the exception between 3 and 25 ROIs for T1 SNR and between 1 and 25 ROIs for T2 SNR. It is thought that these ROIs will also show differences in R2 if a longer interval is implemented.
The results also show that signal uniformity across an image was not influenced by Fe2O3 content. Nevertheless, the presence of water in the agar gel phantoms in maintaining the uniformity of signal intensity across an image was vital. It was found that the phantoms were only useful if used immediately after preparation up to 2 weeks. Improvement on the ability of the plastic container in preventing water evaporation such as the formation of water vapor inside the container is crucial and deserves special attention in future studies.
Microstructure changes that occurred during the interval between TP1 and TP2 have been proven to be the cause of significant different in T1 R2 for 1 ROI and 25 ROIs. T1 relaxation is microstructure-dependent, also known as spin–lattice relaxation. The loss of an amount of water at TP2 had caused the T1 relaxation data (T1 SNR) to disperse significantly, thus, causing the R2 value at TP2 to be distinguishable (significantly higher) to that at TP1 for 1 ROI and 25 ROIs. It is believed that if the interval is longer, the difference in R2 between TP1 and TP2 for 3 ROIs may also be noticeable. It is most unlikely that Fe2O3 was the cause of the increase of dispersion at TP2 because the content of Fe2O3 remained unchanged at both TPs.
Equal dispersion of T2 SNR between TP1 and TP2 for all the 1, 3 and 25 ROIs clearly indicated that the T2 relaxation mechanism was not influenced by the microstructure changes that occurred within the phantom particularly on the reduction of water content during the interval between TP1 and TP2 as discussed above. T2 relaxation originates from spin–spin relaxation in the presence of external and local magnetic field inhomogeneities. The fact that at either TP1 or TP2 all the prepared phantoms showed similar T2 relaxation regardless of the differences in water and Fe2O3 content obviously discounted the dependence of the T2 relaxation on water and Fe2O3 Content. Furthermore, under the TSE scheme, contribution from external magnetic field inhomogeneity was nullified by the delivery of multiple RF180°-pulse leaving only local magnetic fields as the source of inhomogeneity from which the latter had caused R2 to be incomparable between TP1 and TP2 for all ROIs.
The uniformity of SNRo and SNRi was achieved at TP1 regardless of the number of ROIs from which they were measured. Similar to the discussion on the effects of ROIs on R2, the phantoms prepared 2 weeks before the scan were still fresh and quite uniform in intensity across the image. At TP2, these characteristics were not as that at TP1 as changes in the microstructure of the phantoms occurred during the interval between TP1 and TP2. At TP2, most comparisons in SNRo and SNRi between 1, 3 and 25 ROIs return a significant difference which explains that uniformity of the signal across the image is no longer preserved.
It is evident that the stability of the SNRo and SNRi was not achieved for all agar gel phantoms as indicated by a significant increase of the two values at TP2 for all ROIs with the exception of SNRi for 25 ROIs that showed equal SNRi at both TPs. These findings are consistent with the results for SNR presented above. As discussed earlier, the main cause of SNR increase at TP2 was due to a relatively higher noise at TP1 as compared to TP2. The argument of this sort should also apply to SNRo and SNRi. Nevertheless, in previous studies, the addition of low concentration of paramagnetic ions have been found to show a large reduction in both SNRo and T1 values of the phantoms [1, 13, 19,20,21].
The uniformity of the signal intensity of the T1 and T2 measurement images at TP1 was also supported by the small differences in the T1 and T2 values obtained from 1, 3 and 25 ROIs. It can be said that the spin–lattice and spin–spin relaxations that had occurred within the phantoms during the scans have little influence on signal intensity fluctuation across the images. These again can be attributed to the freshness of the phantoms that were prepared 2 weeks before, with initial content of water and microstructure.
The non-uniformity of the signal intensity across the images starts to appear at TP2 at which the comparisons in T1 and T2 values between 1, 3 and 25 ROIs resulted in significant difference for at least 3 out of 6 comparisons for both T1 and T2 values with comparisons of T2 values between the ROIs indicated difference in only 1 comparison. The change in the spin’s environment during the interval between TP1 and TP2 as discussed above was obviously the reasons for such differences in the comparisons.
Longitudinally, only T1 value was affected by the change in water content and microstructure of the phantoms that had occur during the interval specifically for 1 ROI and 25 ROIs, while T2 value remains unchanged at TP2 for all ROIs. This evident strengthens previous arguments that the change in the water content and microstructure of the phantoms have no significant effect on T2 relaxation but on T1 relaxation. In a previous study, the instability in the agar gel phantoms was indeed existed. T1 of the agar gel phantoms showed a slow increase from TP1 to the next [18].
The use of Fe2O3 in this study was not able to modify the T1 of the pure agar gel phantom. Furthermore, the T1 of the agar gel phantoms apparently did not mimic human tissue even with the addition of different Fe2O3 masses. The closest human tissue mimicked by the agar gel phantoms was blood (1948 ms) which is fluid in nature. Meanwhile, the T2 of the agar gel phantoms would be able to represent and mimic certain tissues or organs in human body, such as muscle (50 ms), kidneys (56 ms), and breast fat and glandular (53–54 ms) [20]. However, Fe2O3 could have been a good relaxation modifier if dissolved in hydrochloric acid (HCl) due to the fact that Fe2O3 is an insoluble salt and can only be dissolved in HCl. The end product of the reaction is iron (III) chloride (FeCl3) which is a soluble salt, and has been proven to be a good T1 relaxation modifier [22].
Several studies have demonstrated that the concentration of gelling agent would affect the T1 and T2 of the gel phantoms [19,20,21,22,23]. In those studies, it was found that by increasing the concentration of gelling agents reduced the T1 of the gel phantoms. This was related to the water content in the phantoms. High concentration of gel phantom indicates high proportion of agar used and less free water in the gel structure. This creates a high barrier for hydrogen spins to move resulting in a shorter T1. It has also been reported that high gel phantom concentrations resulted in low T2 due to its low water content after evaporation, indicating less dipole–dipole interaction for the mechanism of T2 relaxation [4, 19]. In this study, the concentration of agar gel phantoms was fixed at 0.03 gml−1; hence, any change in T1 and T2 relaxations within and between TP1 and TP2 was not attributed to the concentration of the gelling agent.
At TP1 and TP2, the T1 curves of all agar gel phantoms showed an exponential increment as TR increased. However, there was a reduction in T1 in this study which may be due to the water loss that occurred during the interval, increasing the concentration of the agar gel phantoms. T1 is a measure of the rate of T1 relaxation process. A longer TR means more time for longitudinal magnetization to recover. T1 relaxation is also termed as spin–lattice relaxation. Proton spins in the agar gel phantoms release energy to the surrounding and then return to the low energy spin-up state resulting in a recovery of longitudinal magnetization (Mz) to its equilibrium state. The faster the recovery of Mz, the shorter the T1. The agar gel phantoms with shorter T1 indicates higher efficiency of proton spins in releasing its energy to the surrounding as compared to distilled water. This means, the precession frequency of proton spins in the agar gel phantoms is closer to the Larmor frequency and much shorter than that of distilled water. The reduction in water content of the phantoms resulted in the spin–lattice relaxation to become more efficient and thus shortened the T1.
When TR was fixed at 2000 ms, the SNR of all the phantoms decreased exponentially as TE increased for all ROIs at both TP. This was due to the progressive dephasing of the spinning dipoles resulting in gradual decrease of transversal magnetization (Mx–y) with time. T2 is a measure of the rate of this dephasing process. It determines the rate at which the excited protons are being out of phase with each other. This trend can be observed in all agar gel phantoms with the addition of Fe2O3 as a relaxation modifier. Pure agar hydrogel and agarose gel phantoms in other studies have exhibited a similar trend of SNR signal reduction as TE increased with T2 values of 116.71 ms and 150.00 ms, respectively [5, 19]. The T2 values of the agar gel phantoms in this study are still in the range of T2 for human tissues (40–150 ms) [1].
The agar gel phantoms consisted of abundance of hydrogen atoms, hence the spins. When larger Fe2O3 molecules were introduced into the agar gel phantoms, they caused local magnetic field inhomogeneity which then induced a larger difference from the Larmor frequency of the spins [24]. As a result, the T2 of the agar gel phantoms with the addition of Fe2O3 was shorter as the spins dephased faster. Although the use of Fe2O3 as a relaxation modifier has been able to reduce the T2 of the agar gel phantoms, the change was not clearly manifested at both TP1 and TP2. This may be due to the insolubility of Fe2O3 in the agar gel phantoms or due to the size of the Fe2O3 particles.