Petra Schmalbrock1, Francisco Aguila1, David Pitt2, Aaron Boster2, Michael Racke2, Kottil Rammohan2, Wei Pei2, Steffen Sammet1, Michael Vincent Knopp1
1Radiology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA; 2Neurology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
Depiction of cortical lesions in Multiple Sclerosis is of significant interest. With its increased SNR and spatial resolution, 7T MRI is uniquely suited for this task. The objective of our study was to test and validate with pathology different sequences with spatial resolution ranging from those feasible in vivo to ultra-high resolution scans over several hours. Lesion contrast was best with a white matter attenuated turbo-field echo sequence which, at high spatial resolution, yielded the highest lesion count, even though SNR was lower compared to susceptibility-weighted MRI. SWI performed well for depiction of mixed lesions, but not intracortical lesions.