Human T2* and Phase Imaging at 9.4 T

Juliane Sabine Budde¹, Gunamony Shajan¹, Jens Hoffmann¹, Frank Muehlbauer¹, Kmil Ugurbil², Rolf Pohmann¹

Ultra-high static magnetic field causes higher susceptibility effects which yield shorter T2* values and larger variations of the image phase. In this work, we acquired highly detailed T2* maps showing internal structures. Mean T2* values for GM were estimated as 28ms6ms and 20ms4ms for WM. Phase images were post-processed to yield images with high tissue contrast between grey and white matter throughout the brain at a resolution of 200m x 200m x 1mm. Signal gain at ultra-high field allows for high resolution surface phase images of 130m x 130m in-plane resolution. In these, differences within grey matter are visible.