Journal of neuroimaging : official journal of the American Society of Neuroimaging
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Double inversion recovery (DIR) imaging is used in multiple sclerosis (MS) clinical protocols to improve the detection of cortical and juxtacortical gray matter lesions by nulling confounding signals originating from the cerebrospinal fluid and white matter. Achieving a high isotropic spatial resolution, to depict the neocortex and its typically small lesions, is challenged by the reduced signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) determined by multiple tissue signal nulling. Here, we evaluate both conventional and optimized DIR implementations to improve tissue contrast (TC), SNR, and MS lesion conspicuity. ⋯ DIR with T2P should be preferred to conventional DIR imaging in protocols studying MS patients, as it improves SNR and TC and determines an improvement in cortical, optic nerve, and cervical cord lesion conspicuity.