Apparatus, methods, and other embodiments associated with the spectral analysis of T2 spectral data are described. One example magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method includes accessing a data set comprising T2 spectral data associated with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) signal received from an object. The T2 spectral data is decomposed with multi-exponential functions to determine T2 spectra. The T2 spectral amplitude is regularized with a regularized constant. The regularized constant is sufficiently large to smooth the T2 spectra so adjacent pixels of the T2 spectral data have similar characteristics. The T2 spectral data is weighted so that the regularization is uniformly weighted for the spectral amplitudes. The T2 spectra is partitioned into intervals corresponding to myelin water fraction (MWF), tissue water fraction (TWF), Long T2 water fraction (LWF), and cerebrospinal fluid fraction (CSF). Parametric maps are generated based, at least in part, on the T2 spectral data.
T2 SPECTRAL ANALYSIS FOR MYELIN WATER IMAGING