MR imaging of liver metastases at 1.5 T: similar contrast discrimination with T1- and T2-weighted pulse sequences.
The authors evaluated soft-tissue contrast on spin-echo (SE) proton density-weighted, SE T2-weighted, SE short-echo-time (TE) T1-weighted, and gradient-echo (GRE) images of 34 patients with known hepatic tumors who underwent high-field-strength (1.5-T) magnetic resonance imaging. For solid liver tumors, the difference in the mean lesion-liver contrast-to-noise ratios (C/Ns) with T1- (GRE and SE) and T2-weighted pulse sequences was not statistically significant (P greater than .05). For nonsolid liver tumors, the T2-weighted images provided significantly greater (P less than .05) mean lesion-liver C/N than T1-weighted GRE images. Mean liver signal-to-noise ratio was significantly greater on T1-weighted GRE (P less than .0001) and T1-weighted SE (P less than .05) images than on T2- and proton density-weighted images. Qualitative analysis of T1-weighted (SE and GRE) images and proton density- plus T2-weighted images showed that lesion conspicuity was similar in 25 of 32 patients (78%). The results suggest that liver tumor imaging at high field strength can be performed with short-TE T1-weighted (SE or GRE) or conventional T2-weighted pulse sequences.
Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
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S
Saini
W
W
Li
B
B
Wallner
P F
PF
Hahn
R R
RR
Edelman
D006801:Humans; D008099:Liver / Q000473:pathology; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000556:secondary*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D013154:Spleen / Q000473:pathology