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Echo-planar imaging of the liver with a standard MR imaging system
K Butts1, S J Riederer, R L Ehman
1Magnetic Resonance Laboratory, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN 55905.
Purpose:
A multisection, whole-body echo-planar imaging (EPI) sequence was developed to obtain T2-weighted images of the liver in one 18-second breath hold with a standard magnetic resonance (MR) imaging system.
Materials And Methods:
This capability was achieved by dividing the data acquisition period into eight interleaved segments rather than one or two as implemented previously with EPI systems having high-power gradient subsystems.
Results:
The interleaved echo-planar images had excellent depiction of anatomy and no identifiable respiratory artifact. In 26 lesions in 12 patients, the eight-shot echo-planar images (2,000/66 [repetition time msec/echo time msec]) had superior contrast compared with conventional T2-weighted spin-echo (SE) images (2,500/60) by an average factor of 1.22 +/- 0.31 (standard deviation) and an average contrast-to-noise ratio relative to conventional T2-weighted SE images of 0.85 +/- 0.22.
Conclusion:
With a conventional MR imaging system, breath-hold T2-weighted echo-planar images of the liver are comparable in diagnostic quality to conventional T2-weighted SE images.