Patients with plasma cell disorders examined at whole-body dynamic contrast-enhanced MR imaging: initial experience

This study was approved by the institutional review board, and informed consent was obtained from all subjects. The authors prospectively evaluated the feasibility of multistation whole-body dynamic contrast material-enhanced magnetic resonance (MR) imaging performed in patients with plasma cell disorders to assess disease extension and the time-signal intensity curves of diffuse and focal bone marrow infiltration. Three healthy adult male volunteers (age range, 29-31 years) and 21 patients (12 men, nine women; age range, 34-79 years) underwent whole-body dynamic unenhanced (volunteers) and contrast-enhanced MR imaging, which was performed by using an 18-channel 1.5-T MR system. A five-station (three sagittal and two coronal planes) fat-saturated three-dimensional gradient-echo sequence (3.3-3.6/1.3 [repetition time msec/echo time msec], 20 degrees flip angle, voxel size of 2 x 2.6 x [3-5] mm) was performed seven times. The temporal resolution of the five-station dynamic contrast-enhanced examination was 60 seconds with use of parallel imaging. Time-signal intensity curves for the bone marrow and the focal lesions were successfully obtained in all patients.

http://radiology.rsnajnls.org/cgi/content/full/250/3/905/DC1http://radiology.rsnajnls.org/cgi/content/full/250/3/905/DC2http://radiology.rsnajnls.org/cgi/content/full/250/3/905/DC3.