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Quantitative assessment of myelination is important for characterizing tissue damage and evaluating response to therapy in white matter diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Conventional multicomponent T₂ relaxometry based on the two‐dimensional (2D) multiecho spin echo sequence is a promising method to measure myelin water fraction, but its clinical utility is impeded by the prohibitively long data acquisition and limited brain coverage. The objective of this study was to develop a signal‐to‐noise ratio efficient 3D T₂prep spiral gradient echo (3D SPIRAL) sequence for full brain T₂ relaxometry and to validate this sequence using 3D multiecho spin echo as reference standard in healthy brains at 1.5 T. 3D SPIRAL was found to provide similar myelin water fraction in six selected white and gray matter areas using region‐of‐interest signal averaging analysis (N = 7, P > 0.05). While 3D multiecho spin echo only …