Abstract
Background
There have been no previous studies comparing the effectiveness of echo-planar imaging (EPI)-diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and turbo spin echo (TSE)-DWI for female pelvic imaging on 1.5T and 3.0T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems.
Purpose
This retrospective study compared EPI-DWI and TSE-DWI of the female pelvis at 1.5T and 3.0T MRI to evaluate image quality, geometric distortion, and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values for optimal clinical diagnosis.
Materials and methods
Thirty-nine patients at 1.5T and 71 patients at 3.0T underwent both TSE- and EPI-DWI with b-values of 0 and 1000 s/mm2. Spatial resolution was matched between systems and sequences. Geometric distortion, contrast ((uterine myometrium signal intensity (SI) - gluteal muscle SI)/(uterine myometrium SI + gluteal muscles SI)), and ADC values of the uterine myometrium and lesions were compared. Qualitative assessment included ghosting artifacts, image contrast, and overall image quality.
Results
There was no significant difference in patient demographics between 1.5T and 3.0T groups. TSE-DWI demonstrated significantly less distortion than EPI-DWI at both field strengths (p < .05). Contrast was higher with TSE-DWI than EPI-DWI at 3.0T (p < .05) and was greater at 3.0T than 1.5T. ADC values of malignancies differed significantly from the uterus and benign lesions across all sequences and field strengths (p < .05). TSE-DWI showed higher ghosting artifact scores than EPI-DWI at 3.0T (p = .019), but no other significant differences in qualitative evaluation were noted.
Conclusion
TSE-DWI provided superior contrast with reduced distortion compared to EPI-DWI in the female pelvis at both field strengths, with TSE-DWI demonstrating greater effectiveness at 3.0T.
