Technical Note: Human tissue-equivalent MRI phantom preparation for 3 and 7 Tesla.

PURPOSE While test objects (phantoms) in MRI are crucial for sequence development, protocol validation and quality control, studies on the preparation of phantoms has been scarce, particularly at fields exceeding 3 Tesla. Here we present a framework for the preparation of phantoms with well-defined T1 and T2 times at 3 and 7 Tesla. METHODS Phantoms with varying concentrations of agarose and Gd-DTPA were prepared and measured at 3 and 7 Tesla using T1 and T2 mapping techniques. An empirical, polynomial model was constructed that best represents the data at both field strengths, enabling the preparation of new phantoms with specified combinations of both T1 and T2 . Instructions for three different tissue types (brain grey matter, brain white matter, and renal cortex) are presented and validated. RESULTS T1 times in the samples ranged from 698ms to 2820ms and from 695ms to 2906ms, whereas T2 times ranged from 39ms to 227ms and from 34ms to 235ms for 3 and 7 Tesla scans, respectively. Models for both relaxation times used six parameters to represent the data with an adjusted R2 of 0.998 and 0.997 for T1 and T2 , respectively. CONCLUSION Based on the equations derived from the current study, it is now possible to obtain accurate weight specifications for a test object with desired T1 and T2 relaxation times. This will spare researchers the laborious task of trail-and-error approaches in test object preparation attempts.