Intratympanic Gadolinium Contrast MRI Protocol

As our previous studies described, the Gd contrast medium (Omniscan, Xudonghaipu Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd, Shanghai, China) was diluted 8-fold with saline (v/v, 1: 7). Approximately 0.4–0.6 ml of the diluted Gd was injected intratympanically. The injection was performed under a microscope. The patient then was placed in the supine position for 60 min (14 (link)).
Twenty-four hours after the Gd injection, MRI scans were performed with a 3.0 Tesla MR scanner (UMR 770, united-imaging, Shanghai, China), using a 24-channel head coil. 3D-FLAIR imaging was subsequently performed. The scan parameters for the 3D-FLAIR sequence were as follows: time of repetition = 6,500 ms, time of echo = 286.1 ms, time of inversion = 1,950 ms, flip angle = 67°, slice thickness = 0.6 mm, echo train length = 160, field of view = 200 ^* 200 mm, and matrix size = 256 ^* 256, voxel size = 0.78 ^* 0.78 ^* 1.1 mm. The scan time was 6 min 11 s. Three dimensional heavily T2-weighted spectral attenuated inversion recovery (3D-T2-SPAIR) sequence was also performed with the following parameters: voxel size = 0.65 ^* 0.52 ^* 0.76 mm, scan time = 4 min 30 s, TR = 1,300 ms, TE = 254.7 ms, flip angle = 110°, slice thickness = 0.4 mm, field of view = 200 ^* 200 mm, and matrix size = 384 ^* 384 (15 (link)).