Siemens' latest 3 Tesla scanner, the Magnetom Prisma, represents a significant upgrade in performance capability over the Magnetom TimTrio. To quantify the improvements offered by such a significant system upgrade, we scanned 8 subjects using a variety of anatomical, functional and diffusion protocols on the TimTrio platform, and then repeated the same protocols on the Prisma platform with the same subjects after the upgrade process. We found consistency in morphometric results from anatomical scans acquired using recommended T1-weighted imaging protocols. Modest improvements in tSNR for high-resolution and highly-slice accelerated BOLD scans were seen, but more traditional 3mm resolution scans yielded no improvement presumably due to the dominance of physiological noise. The DTI scans conducted here benefit greatly from the new gradient coil in the Prisma, when protocols are optimized to reduce TE and bandwidth as allowed by the new gradient set.
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