Diffusion Tensor Imaging at 7T: Expectations Vs. Reality Check

Oliver Speck¹, Kai Zhong¹

In addition to strong T2 weighting, diffusion encoding reduces the signal significantly to encode the direction information. Therefore, DTI is notoriously SNR hungry and the use of very high field strength has been proposed to increase sensitivity. Despite the introduction of 7T, it is still not clear if 7T results in data quality improvement. The SNR gain in DTI measurements at 7T is estimated based on realistic tissue and imaging parameters. Large volume coverage DTI data have been acquired at 3T and at 7T and were compared. With current whole body gradients diffusion imaging at 7T is not superior to 3T.