Anja G. van der Kolk1, J Martijn Nobel2, Jaco JM Zwanenburg1, Fredy Visser1, Peter R. Luijten1, Jeroen Hendrikse1
1Department of Radiology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands; 2University Utrecht, Utrecht, Netherlands
Fluid-Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR)-imaging is one of the mainstays of current cerebral diagnostic protocols. At 7.0 Tesla (7T) MRI, SNR increases, theoretically increasing both localization accuracy and lesion conspicuousness of FLAIR-sequences. However, so far, these advantages have only been assessed in healthy volunteers. In this study, clinically obtained 1.5T FLAIR-imaging were compared to FLAIR-imaging at 7T in 10 patients with cerebrovascular disease. Overall quality of both sequences were comparable, although field inhomogeneity artifacts were more severe at 7T. Both sequences adequately distinguish pathology from healthy tissue. These results show that 7T FLAIR-imaging can be used in the clinical setting.
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