title: Breath-hold MR imaging of focal liver lesions: comparison of fast and ultrasound techniques.
abstract: The performance of breath-hold MR imaging using two T2-weighted hybrid sequences (TSE, TGSE), two T2-weighted single-shot sequences (HASTE, EPI-SE), and one T1-weighted gradient-echo sequence (FLASH) was compared with a standard conventional T2-weighted SE sequence in 20 patients with focal liver lesions. Liver signal-to-noise ratio was highest for the FLASH sequence (54.3 +/- 8.3) and the HASTE (41.1 +/- 12.5) sequence, whereas the highest spleen-liver contrast-to-noise ratio was obtained by the TSE sequence (38.9 +/- 20.7). Lesion-liver CNR was highest with the TSE sequence (63.9 +/- 21.4). With both TSE and HASTE significantly (p < 0.01) more lesions were detected as compared with SE and EPI-SE sequences. Our results indicate that breath-hold TSE and HASTE sequences will eventually replace conventional T2-weighted SE techniques, due to their insensitivity to motion artifacts, superior lesion detectability and inherently short acquisition times.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Radiology, Klinikum Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Germany.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gaa
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Fischer
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Laub
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Georgi
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D016477:Artifacts; D003560:Cysts / Q000175:diagnosis; D005260:Female; D006391:Hemangioma / Q000175:diagnosis; D006801:Humans; D008107:Liver Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008113:Liver Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000556:secondary; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged