Full brain relaxometry at 7T in 3 minutes by accelerated MR-STAT using a low-SAR flip angle train

MR-STAT is a framework that enables the estimation of multi-parametric quantitative MR-maps from a single short scan. Quantitative imaging at 7T can be used to probe the brain’s microstructure at high resolution. We show the first results of MR-STAT at 7T and show that SAR-limitations and B1+-inhomogeneities can be successfully addressed by designing a low-SAR flip angle train and using a B1+-prior during reconstruction. In addition, we use the increased SNR at 7T to achieve two-fold acceleration of the MR-STAT acquisition and show that high quality parameters can be obtained both on a gel-phantom and in-vivo (full-brain) in 3 minutes.