AbstractUltrashort echo time (UTE) imaging with soft‐tissue suppression reveals short‐T2 components (typically hundreds of microseconds to milliseconds) ordinarily not captured or obscured by long‐T2 tissue signals on the order of tens of milliseconds or longer. Therefore, the technique enables visualization and quantification of short‐T2 proton signals such as those in highly collagenated connective tissues. This work compares the performance of the three most commonly used long‐T2 suppression UTE sequences, i.e., echo subtraction (dual‐echo UTE), saturation via dual‐band saturation pulses (dual‐band UTE), and inversion by adiabatic inversion pulses (IR‐UTE) at 3 T, via Bloch simulations and experimentally in vivo in the lower extremities of test subjects. For unbiased performance comparison, the acquisition parameters are optimized individually for each sequence to maximize short‐T2 signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) and contrast‐to‐noise ratio (CNR) between short‐ and long‐T2 components. Results show excellent short‐T2 contrast which is achieved with these optimized sequences. A combination of dual‐band UTE with dual‐echo UTE provides good short‐T2 SNR and CNR with less sensitivity to B1 homogeneity. IR‐UTE has the lowest short‐T2 SNR efficiency but provides highly uniform short‐T2 contrast and is well suited for imaging short‐T2 species with relatively short T1 such as bone water. Magn Reson Med, 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.