Compressed Sensing for Breast MRI: Resolving the Trade-Off Between Spatial and Temporal Resolution.

Area of Science:

• Radiology and Imaging Science
• Medical Physics
• Oncology

Background:

• Ultrafast dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) of the breast offers rapid assessment but often has limited slice thickness, hindering multiplanar reconstruction.
• Existing ultrafast techniques like time-resolved angiography with interleaved stochastic trajectories (TWIST) can suffer from temporal blurring due to view-sharing.
• Diagnostic spatial resolution is crucial, but achieving it with ultrafast temporal resolution (<5 seconds/volume) remains a challenge in breast MRI.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate a prototype compressed-sensing volume-interpolated breath-hold examination (CS-VIBE) sequence for ultrafast breast MRI.
• To compare the image quality and artifact profile of CS-VIBE against the ultrafast TWIST sequence.
• To assess the diagnostic performance of CS-VIBE for lesion morphology compared to a standard T1-weighted 3D Dixon (VIBE-DIXON) sequence.

Main Methods:

• A prospective study involving 30 women using a hybrid breast MRI protocol on a 3T scanner.
• Two reader studies were conducted: one comparing overall image quality and artifacts of CS-VIBE and TWIST (n=23).
• The second study assessed lesion morphology and conspicuity of CS-VIBE versus VIBE-DIXON in 16 women with 31 lesions.

Main Results:

• CS-VIBE achieved significantly higher through-plane spatial resolution than TWIST within the same acquisition time, with comparable in-plane image quality.
• TWIST exhibited more motion, infolding, and ghosting artifacts, while CS-VIBE showed increased breathing and pulsation artifacts.
• Morphological assessment agreement between CS-VIBE and VIBE-DIXON was slight to almost perfect, with comparable sensitivity and specificity.

Conclusions:

• The CS-VIBE sequence enhances through-plane spatial resolution in ultrafast breast DCE-MRI compared to TWIST, maintaining image quality.
• CS-VIBE provides morphological assessment of breast lesions comparable to the longer VIBE-DIXON sequence.
• This advancement enables comprehensive 3D evaluation of breast lesions within an ultrafast MRI acquisition timeframe.