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The poor clinical acceptance of polymer gel dosimetry for dose verification in stereotactic radio-surgery applications stems, inter alia, from the increased MRI acquisition times needed to meet the associated spatial resolution demands. To examine whether this could be partly alleviated by the employment of 3 Tesla imagers and parallel imaging techniques, a PolyAcrylamide Gel filled tube was irradiated in a Leksell Gamma Knife unit with two single irradiation shots (4 mm and 8 mm) and underwent four different scanning sessions using an optimised, volume selective, 32 echo CPMG pulse sequence: One performed on a 1.5 T imager with 0.5 × 0.5 mm2 in-plane spatial resolution and 0.75 mm slice thickness (scan A), while the rest three on a 3.0 T imager; one with the same spatial resolution as in scan A (scan B) and two with finer in-plane resolution (scans C and D). In scans B and C the sensitivity encoding (SENSE) parallel imaging technique was employed. Relative dose distributions derived by scan A were benchmarked against Monte Carlo and treatment planning system calculations, and then used as the reference for the comparison of 2D relative dose distributions derived by each scan in terms of dose difference and distance-to-agreement criteria (γ index tool). Findings suggest that careful MRI planning based on a figure of merit accounting for scanning time and precision for a given increase in spatial resolution, could facilitate the introduction of polymer gel dosimetry into the clinical setting as a practical quality assurance tool for complex radio-surgery Atechniques. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd and SISS.