Performing MRI scans in human subjects wearing metallic orthodontic braces

MR images are very sensitive to susceptibility artifacts in the presence of metallic objects such as dental braces. This impedes the application of MRI for studies involving participants wearing metallic dental braces. It also presents a significant barrier for presurgical MRI in epilepsy and tumor patients with metallic head implants, hemorrhages, and other lesions with strong susceptibility effects. In this talk, we introduce two alternative MRI approaches in healthy human subjects wearing metallic orthodontic braces to demonstrate their ability to minimize susceptibility artifacts in the presence of metallic objects. Removable dental braces with bonding trays were used so that MR images could be acquired with and without the braces in the same subjects. Results were compared in regions with strong or minimal susceptibility effects between the current standard MRI sequences and the proposed alternatives using t-tests. The new methods showed preserved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in brain regions with strong or minimal susceptibility effects from the metallic braces, whereas the conventional MRI methods showed significantly impaired sensitivity in regions with strong susceptibility effects. Geometric distortion was substantially reduced throughout the brain with the proposed methods.