Comparison of breath-hold multishot echo-planar and respiratory triggered fast-spin-echo sequences for T2-weighted MRI of liver lesions

✍ Scribed by Koichiro Yamakado; Hajime Sakuma; Shuichi Murashima; Atsuhiro Nakatsuka; Kaname Matsumura; Kan Takeda

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 777 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1053-1807
• DOI: 10.1002/jmri.1880080225

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of multishot echo‐planar imaging in detecting liver tumors in comparison with respiratory triggered T2‐weighted fast‐spin‐echo (FSE) imaging. Thirty‐two patients with 70 focal liver lesions were imaged using a 1.5‐T high speed MR imager. Eight‐shot echo‐planar images covering the whole liver were acquired during a single breath‐hold period. FSE images were acquired with respiratory triggering in approximately 4 minutes. Lesion detectability and image quality of the two pulse sequences were analyzed qualitatively. Quantitative analysis was performed by means of signal‐to‐noise and tumor‐liver contrast‐to‐noise analysis. Lesion detectability was comparable in both solid (86.3% vs 90.2%: .3 < P < .5) and nonsolid lesions (89.5% vs 100%: .3 < P < .5) between echo‐planar and FSE images. Echo‐planar imaging provided significantly reduced image artifact, better lesion conspicuity, and anatomic detail compared with FSE imaging. The signal‐to‐noise and contrast‐to‐noise ratios of echo‐planar images were significantly higher than those of FSE images. Breath‐hold eight‐shot echo‐planar imaging can be an alternative to T2‐weighted FSE imaging because it can provide comparable image quality in a substantially decreased acquisition time.