High Resolution 3D Intracranial Imaging at 3.0T

Yiu-Cho Chung¹, Steven Shea², Ye Qiao³, Orlando P. Simonetti⁴, Bruce Wasserman³

Intracranial artery imaging is usually done by 2DTSE. However, the technique has long scan time, and has very limited anatomical coverage. We propose here the use of T1w-SPACE, a variant of TSE, for 3D imaging of the intracranial vessels. Using a 32 channel head coil at 3.0T, the technique achieves a spatial resolution of (0.5mm)3, comparable to CT, in less than 11minutes. The technique can cover both sides of the tortuous ICA and MCA in one scan. SNR comparison found that the 3D technique has consistently higher SNR than 2DTSE.