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Clinical feasibility of an abdominal thin-slice breath-hold single-shot fast spin echo sequence processed using a
Taku Tajima1, Hiroyuki Akai2, Koichiro Yasaka3
1Department of Radiology, International University of Health and Welfare Mita Hospital, 1-4-3 Mita, Minato-ku, Tokyo 108-8329, Japan; Department of Radiology, International University of Health and Welfare Narita Hospital, 852 Hatakeda Narita, Chiba 286-0124, Japan.
Background:
T2-weighted imaging (T2WI) is a key sequence of MRI studies of the pancreas. The single-shot fast spin echo (single-shot FSE) sequence is an accelerated form of T2WI. We hypothesized that denoising approach with deep learning-based reconstruction (dDLR) could facilitate accelerated breath-hold thin-slice single-shot FSE MRI, and reveal the pancreatic anatomy in detail.
Purpose:
To assess the image quality of thin-slice (3 mm) respiratory-triggered FSE T2WI (Resp-FSE) and breath-hold fast advanced spin echo with and without dDLR (BH-dDLR-FASE and BH-FASE, respectively) at 1.5 T.
Materials And Methods:
MR images of 42 prospectively enrolled patients with suspected pancreaticobiliary disease were obtained at 1.5 T. We qualitatively and quantitatively evaluated image quality of BH-dDLR-FASE related to BH-FASE and Resp-FSE.
Results:
The scan time of BH-FASE was significantly shorter than that of Resp-FSE (30 ± 4 s and 122 ± 25 s, p < 0.001). Qualitatively, dDLR significantly improved BH-FASE image quality, and the image quality of BH-dDLR-FASE was significantly better than that of Resp-FSE; as quantitative parameters, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of BH-dDLR-FASE were also significantly better than those of Resp-FSE. The BH-dDLR-FASE sequence covered the entire pancreas and liver and provided overall image quality rated close to excellent.
Conclusions:
The dDLR technique enables accelerated thin-slice single-shot FSE, and BH-dDLR-FASE seems to be clinically feasible.
