High-Quality 3-Dimensional 1H Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging of the Prostate Without Endorectal Receive Coil Using A Semi-LASER Sequence

Objectives: Inclusion of 3-dimensional 1H magnetic resonance spectroscopic imaging (3D-1H-MRSI) in routine multiparametric MRI of the prostate requires good quality spectra and easy interpretable metabolite maps of the whole organ obtained without endorectal coil in clinically feasible acquisition times. We evaluated if a semi-LASER pulse sequence with gradient offset independent adiabaticity refocusing pulses (GOIA-sLASER) for volume selection can meet these requirements. Materials and Methods: Thirteen patients with suspicion of prostate cancer and 1 patient known to have prostate cancer were examined at 3 T with a multichannel body-receive coil. A 3D-1H-MRSI sequence with GOIA-sLASER volume selection (echo time, 88 milliseconds) was added to a routine clinical multiparametric MRI examination of these patients. Repetition times from 630 to 1000 milliseconds and effective voxel sizes of approximately 0.9 and 0.6 cm3 were tested. Spectral components were quantified by LCModel software for quality assessment and to construct choline and citrate maps. Results: Three-dimensional MRSI of the prostate was successfully performed in all patients in measurement times of 5 to 10 minutes. Analysis of the multiparametric MRI examination or of biopsies did not reveal malignant tissue in the prostate of the 13 patients. In 1404 evaluated voxels acquired from 13 patients, the citrate resonance could be fitted with a high reliability (Cramér-Rao lower bound
Source: Investigative Radiology - Category: Radiology Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research