Liver metastases: detection with MR imaging at 0.5 and 1.5 T

Area of Science:

• Radiology
• Medical Imaging
• Oncology

Background:

• Liver metastases detection is crucial for patient management.
• Advancements in magnetic resonance (MR) imaging aim to improve diagnostic accuracy.
• Computed tomography (CT) with ethiodized oil emulsion-13 (EOE-13) is a benchmark for liver lesion detection.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the efficacy of different magnetic resonance (MR) pulse sequences at 0.5 T and 1.5 T for detecting liver metastases.
• To evaluate MR imaging performance against contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CT) using EOE-13.

Main Methods:

• Nineteen patients with known liver metastases underwent MR imaging at 0.5 T and 1.5 T using various pulse sequences.
• MR imaging parameters included spin-echo (SE) and inversion recovery (IR) sequences with specific repetition times (TR) and echo times (TE) or inversion times (TI).
• Patients also had computed tomography (CT) scans enhanced with ethiodized oil emulsion-13 (EOE-13).

Main Results:

• At 0.5 T, SE 300/22 sequence detected 92.4% of liver metastases.
• At 1.5 T, the T1-weighted IR 2,000/600 sequence demonstrated 89.5% of lesions.
• EOE-13 enhanced CT scans depicted 93.3% of metastases, showing comparable performance to MR imaging.

Conclusions:

• T1-weighted MR imaging at 1.5 T (IR 2,000/600) is as effective as 0.5 T (SE 300/22) for liver metastases detection.
• MR imaging at both field strengths provides diagnostic performance comparable to state-of-the-art CT.
• These findings support the use of advanced MR techniques for liver metastasis evaluation.