The depiction of human spinal cord (SC) morphology is challenging due to fine structures, bulk motion, CSF pulsation and low contrast between gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM) in the SC [1,2]. Different approaches such as rapid T1 weighted gradient echo and T1 and T2 weighted turbo spin echo sequences have been suggested [1,2]; however, the acquisition and postprocessing techniques become more and more complex and acquisition times tend to increase constantly. In the following, we suggest a simple image combination technique of different inversion recovery (IR) prepared balanced steady state free precession (bSSFP) images acquired by a Modified Look Locker IR (MOLLI) sequence [3], which leads to SC images with estimable contrast and resolution considering the short acquisition time.The work is based on a MOLLI sequence with single-shot bSSFP sampling, which was originally developed for cardiac T1 relaxometry [3]: FOV = 128mm x 128mm, resolution = 0.4mm x 0.4mm, one slice of thickness 8mm that is orthogonal to the course of the spinal cord, signal averaging = 2, GRAPPA parallel acquisition technique with acceleration factor 2, flip angle = 35deg, TE = 2.28ms, TR(bSSFP sampling) = 5.4ms, non-selective IR preparation. The effective inversion times TI(1) = [251,2251,4251] ms, TI(2) = [331,2331,4331] ms and TI(3) = [411,2411,4411,6411,8411] ms were used over three consecutive heartbeats (R-R cycles) in accordance with the published MOLLI scheme [3]. For the present measurements an “artificial”, fixed ECG triggering with a permanent R-R interval of 2000ms was employed. The total acquisition time TA was 2min 14sec. The acquired IR sampling images with different TI were directly averaged and used. All measurements were performed on a 3T whole-body MR system with a healthy volunteer on two different days.Figure 1 shows a series of acquired MOLLI images with the different TI as described in the Methods section. Figure 2 presents such proposed mean images over the acquired series of IR prepared images. For the short TA of a bit more than 2mins the mean images demonstrate a remarkable GM-WM contrast at the very high in-plane resolution of 0.4mm at 3T. The “butterfly” within the SC – as often colloquially referred to – can be observed in a nice way. No bulk motion or CSF pulsation artifacts are observed.As a simple but efficient means for high-resolution imaging of the SC an averaging of the inversion images of a MOLLI sequence was suggested. The strength of the approach lies in its simplicity and that for short acquisition times of about 2mins already a good contrast can be achieved at the high in-plane resolution of 0.4mm. Though the triggering is fixed to a constant interval so far, the images are free of CSF pulsation artifacts (and other motion artifacts). For the future, more thorough analyses will be performed on the interesting nature and origin of this contrast and its further potential for optimization and exploitation. Based on the MOLLI timing scheme with the global inversion RF pulse, an extension to a multi-band acquisition concept is almost straight-forward and, thus, acquisition times of less than 1min per slice are feasible. Another focus will be to study “real ECG triggering” combined with the presented concept for further improvement.