Troubleshooting Ghosting Images

Name
Ghosting, Ghost, Blurring, Phase encoded motion, Phase mismaping, motion or movement
effect

Description
Blurring, displaced reduplications of image in phase encoding direction

Cause: Mainly due to motion

Movement of body fluids, Motion, heartbeat, respiration, Movement of the imaged
object, Patient movement, mechanical vibration of the table top, coil vibration

Remedy
• Ghosting in the diagonal direction
Then one channel of the detector has a higher gain than the other it will result in a ghosting of
objects diagonally in the image. This artifact is the result of a hardware failure and must be
addressed by a service representative.
• Ghosting in the phase direction
- Swap phase and frequency direction for the specific sequences
- Plug tightly the coil connector
- Use pre-saturation pulses by placing saturation pulse over the area producing artifact.
• If problem due to mechanical vibration of SMI system
Return the problem to SMI for investigation??
• If flow
Flow compensation, presaturation, triggering

Resolution steps

A- Ask questions (sample questions)

- Did you have any complain from your patient regarding the comfort of our stretcher?
Because patient comfort minimize voluntary motion. And sometime it is important to
remind the customer to remain still during the scan.
- The 8-10 images where obtained in successive exam or these occur randomly, that is
someday you have good images and some other days you have artifacts?
- Does the patient sense a vibration of the table for the special sequence?

B – Isolate the problem

- Mechanical: table vibration, docking issue?
- Patient motion?
- Changes in pulse sequence parameter (FOV)/ Operator problem/ Protocol problem?
- Coil defect / problem with parallel imaging?
Artifact due to the small size of the breast. Fill the empty space with additional pads

Other motion artifact