Cerebral small vessel disease frequently affects the small perforating arteries, resulting in silent strokes, which contribute to progressive cognitive impairment in elderly persons. Previous studies have demonstrated the ability of time-of-flight (TOF) MRA to non-invasively image these small arteries at 7T; In this study, we introduce and optimize a T1-weighted turbo spin echo sequence with variable flip angles (T1w-VFA-TSE) sequence for high resolution black blood MRI to delineate the lenticulostriate arteries (LSA) at 3T and 7T. Our results show T1w-VFA-TSE provides high contrast for visualizing LSAs and delineates small arteries better than TOF MRA at 7T.
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