Quiet T1-weighted imaging using PETRA: initial clinical evaluation in intracranial tumor patients.

Purpose: To compare the lesion contrast and signal to noise ratio (SNR) obtained with T1-weighted pointwise encoding time reduction with radial acquisition (PETRA) to those of Magnetization-Prepared RApid Gradient-Echo (MPRAGE) for contrast-enhanced imaging of primary and metastatic intracranial tumors, and to investigate whether PETRA is able to reduce acoustic noise for improved patient comfort.

Materials And Methods: Fifteen patients with intracranial tumors underwent 3 Tesla MRI including inversion-prepared PETRA and MPRAGE. The two sequences had comparable scan times, spatial resolution and spatial coverage.