[Usefulness of Voxel-Based Quantification (VBQ) Smoothing in Relaxation Time Mapping].

Voxel-based quantification (VBQ) smoothing is a technique used to smooth quantitative parametric maps in the Montreal Neurological Institute standard space. Although VBQ smoothing could suppress changes in quantitative values at tissue boundaries, its effectiveness on relaxation time (T T The changes in relaxation time after VBQ smoothing application were smaller than those in that after Gaussian smoothing application. Although the differences in the relaxation time for all tissues before and after VBQ and Gaussian smoothing applications increased with increasing kernel size for all relaxation times for both methods, the changes in the relaxation time for VBQ smoothing were smaller than those in that for Gaussian smoothing. VBQ smoothing can suppress the change in the relaxation time on the boundary of the tissue and is thus a useful smoothing technique in relaxation time mapping.