Spiral 3-Dimensional T1-Weighted Turbo Field Echo: Increased Speed for Magnetization-Prepared Gradient Echo Brain Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Objectives Spiral magnetic resonance imaging acquisition may enable improved image quality and higher scan speeds than Cartesian trajectories. We tested the performance of four 3D T1-weighted (T1w) TFE sequences (magnetization-prepared gradient echo magnetic resonance sequence) with isotropic spatial resolution for brain imaging at 1.5 T in a clinical patient cohort based on qualitative and quantitative image quality metrics. Two prototypical spiral TFE sequences (spiral 1.0 and spiral 0.85) and a Cartesian compressed sensing technology accelerated TFE sequence (CS 2.5; acceleration factor of 2.5) were compared with a conventional (reference standard) Cartesian parallel imaging accelerated TFE sequence (SENSE; acceleration factor of 1.8). Materials and Methods The SENSE (5:52 minutes), CS 2.5 (3:17 minutes), and spiral 1.0 (2:16 minutes) sequences all had identical spatial resolutions (1.0 mm3). The spiral 0.85 (3:47 minutes) had a higher spatial resolution (0.85 mm3). The 4 TFE sequences were acquired in 41 patients (20 with and 21 without contrast media). Three readers rated qualitative image quality (12 categories) and selected their preferred sequence for each patient. Two readers performed quantitative analysis whereby 6 metrics were derived: contrast-to-noise ratio for white and gray matter (CNRWM/GM), contrast ratio for gray matter–CSF (CRGM/CSF), and white matter–CSF (CRWM/CSF); and coefficient of variations for gray matter (CVGM), white matter (CVWM), ...
Source: Investigative Radiology - Category: Radiology Tags: Original Articles Source Type: research