Which artifact is described as a ghosting artifact?

Which artifact is described as a ghosting artifact?

• A. Partial volume artifact
• B. Ghosting artifact
• C. Slice thickness artifact
• D. Section thickness artifact

Answer: (B)

Ghosting artifact shows up as faint duplicates of anatomy, offset and repeated in the image. It happens when there’s motion during data acquisition—especially periodic motion like respiration or cardiac pulsation, or patient movement—so signals from moving structures don’t line up properly and create these ghost images along the direction in which the data are encoded. This is different from partial volume artifact, which comes from a voxel containing more than one tissue type so the signal is averaged and edges look blurred, not duplicated. Artifacts described by slice thickness or section thickness relate to the finite thickness of the imaged slice and how signals are sampled in the out-of-plane direction, leading to different edge or blurring effects rather than duplicated copies. Reducing motion with breath-holds, gating, or faster imaging helps minimize ghosting.

Ghosting artifact shows up as faint duplicates of anatomy, offset and repeated in the image. It happens when there’s motion during data acquisition—especially periodic motion like respiration or cardiac pulsation, or patient movement—so signals from moving structures don’t line up properly and create these ghost images along the direction in which the data are encoded. This is different from partial volume artifact, which comes from a voxel containing more than one tissue type so the signal is averaged and edges look blurred, not duplicated. Artifacts described by slice thickness or section thickness relate to the finite thickness of the imaged slice and how signals are sampled in the out-of-plane direction, leading to different edge or blurring effects rather than duplicated copies. Reducing motion with breath-holds, gating, or faster imaging helps minimize ghosting.