MR-visibility and relaxation properties of 3-D printed FDM polymers

Abstract

Increasing availability and affordability of 3-D printers utilizing fused deposition modeling (FDM) have enabled their widespread use especially in pre-clinical MRI, allowing in-house design and manufacturing of elaborate coil housings, animal holders, sample holders, etc. Here, we investigated ten common and broadly available FDM polymers for their MRI-visibility at 9.4T. We utilized ultra-short echo time imaging sequences, specifically, single-point-imaging (SPI) and multi-band SWIFT to measure the relaxation properties of the different polymers. The findings support the selection of appropriate printing materials when either visibility or invisibility for ultra-short echo time imaging is required.