Inversion Preparation in Magnetization Transfer Imaging Reduces Irradiation Requirements in Human Brain at 3 T

Tae Kim¹, Kristy Hendrich¹, Seong-Gi Kim¹

We compare various strategies utilizing inversion prepulses applied at water proton frequency and/or off-resonance MT irradiation to obtain magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) maps. Our results demonstrate that MTR maps of similar quality can be obtained at significantly reduced irradiation times (i.e., much lower overall RF power deposition) when incorporating on-resonance inversion prepulses, as compared with steady-state MTR maps acquired with only off-resonance MT irradiation.