Armin Michael Nagel1, Sebastian Schmitter1, Michael Bock1, Ewald Moser2,3, Wolfhard Semmler1, Lothar Rudi Schad4
1Medical Physics in Radiology, German Cancer Research Center, Heidelberg, Germany; 2MR Centre of Excellence, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; 3Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Physics, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; 4Computer Assisted Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine Mannheim, University Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany
The purpose of this study is to provide parameters for the optimization of 23Na-MRI protocols at 7 T. Therefore, T1 and T2* relaxation times of the human brain and different phantoms were measured. SNR and image quality was investigated at three field strengths (1.5 T, 3 T, 7T). The theoretically expected approximately linear increase in SNR with field strength could be confirmed, with minor deviations that can be attributed to relaxation effects. Furthermore, it was shown that appropriate sequence designs, such as a density adapted radial sequence can reduce degradations of image quality due to B0-inhomogeneities even at 7 T.