Clinical feasibility of contrast-enhanced 7T MPRAGE with universal pulses for evaluating intracranial enhancing lesions in oncology patients

Motivation: Contrast-enhanced 7T MPRAGE is promising for imaging intracranial tumor but suffers from strong intensity inhomogeneities. Goal(s): To investigate the clinical feasibility of contrast-enhanced 7T MPRAGE with universal pulses (UP) for evaluating intracranial enhancing lesions in oncology patients. Approach: Contrast-enhanced MPRAGE images with conventional circularly polarized (CP) and UP modes were obtained from 38 patients with known or suspected infratentorial tumors. Qualitative and quantitative image quality of the two sequence were evaluated and compared. Results: Compared to conventional CP images, UP images achieved significantly higher image quality scores, and improved contrast ratios of enhancing lesion to white matter (CRlesion/WM) and gray matter (CRlesion/GM). Impact: This study may facilitate the clinical potential of contrast-enhanced 7T MPRAGE for evaluating enhancing intracranial lesions in oncology patients.