Background T 2 -weighted (T 2 w) intracranial vessel wall imaging (IVWI) provides good contrast to differentiate intracranial vasculopathies and discriminate various important plaque components. However, the strong cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) signal in T 2 w images interferes with depicting the intracranial vessel wall. In this study, we propose a T 2 -prepared sequence for whole-brain IVWI at 3T with CSF suppression. Methods A preparation module that combines T 2 preparation and inversion recovery (T 2 IR) was used to suppress the CSF signal and was incorporated into the commercial three-dimensional (3D) turbo spin echo sequence-Sampling Perfection with Application optimized Contrast using different flip angle Evolution (SPACE). This new technique (hereafter called T 2 IR-SPACE) was evaluated on nine healthy volunteers and compared with two other commonly used 3D T 2 -weighted sequences: T 2 w-SPACE and FLAIR-SPACE (FLAIR: fluid-attenuated inversion recovery). The signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) of the vessel wall (VW) and CSF and contrast-to-noise ratios (CNRs) between them were measured and compared among these three T 2 -weighted sequences. Subjective wall visualization of the three T 2 -weighted sequences was scored blindly and independently by two radiologists using a four-point scale followed by inter-rater reproducibility analysis. A pilot study of four stroke patients was performed to preliminarily evaluate the diagnostic value of this new sequence, which was compared with two conventional T 2 -weighted sequences. Results T 2 IR-SPACE had the highest CNR (11.01 ± 6.75) compared with FLAIR-SPACE (4.49 ± 3.15; p < 0.001) and T 2 w-SPACE (−56.16 ± 18.58; p < 0.001). The subjective wall visualization score of T 2 IR-SPACE was higher than those of FLAIR-SPACE and T 2 w-SPACE (T 2 IR-SPACE: 2.35 ± 0.59; FLAIR-SPACE: 0.52 ± 0.54; T 2 w-SPACE: 1.67 ± 0.58); the two radiologists’ scores showed excellent agreement (ICC = 0.883). Conclusion The T 2 IR preparation module markedly suppressed the CSF signal without ...