Prospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Radiol. Jul 28, 2016; 8(7): 707-715
Published online Jul 28, 2016. doi: 10.4329/wjr.v8.i7.707
Free-breathing radial volumetric interpolated breath-hold examination vs breath-hold cartesian volumetric interpolated breath-hold examination magnetic resonance imaging of the liver at 1.5T
Sireesha Yedururi, HyunSeon C Kang, Wei Wei, Nicolaus A Wagner-Bartak, Leonardo P Marcal, R Jason Stafford, Brandy J Willis, Janio Szklaruk
Sireesha Yedururi, HyunSeon C Kang, Nicolaus A Wagner-Bartak, Leonardo P Marcal, Janio Szklaruk, Department of Diagnostic Radiology, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Wei Wei, Department of Biostatistics, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, United States
R Jason Stafford, Brandy J Willis, Department of Imaging Physics, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030, United States
Author contributions: Yedururi S, Kang HC, Wagner-Bartak NA, Marcal LP, Stafford RJ and Szklaruk J participated in the study design, oversight, execution and manuscript preparation; Kang HC, Wagner-Bartak NA and Marcal LP participated in scoring of the sequences; Stafford RJ provided the imaging physics support; Wei W provided statistical analysis; Willis BJ supervised the MRI examinations.
Supported by The NIH/NCI, No. P30 CA016672.
Institutional review board statement: The study was approved by the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center Institutional Review Board as a Quality Improvement project.
Clinical trial registration statement: This study was approved by the University of Texas, MD Anderson Cancer Center Institutional Review Board as a Quality Improvement project. Clinical trial registration does not apply to this study.
Informed consent statement: A written informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have nothing to disclose.
Data sharing statement: There is no additional data available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Sireesha Yedururi, MBBS, Assistant Professor of Radiology, Department of Diagnostic Radiology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, MDT, Boone Pickens Academic Tower, 1400 Pressler Street, Unit 1473, Houston, TX 77030, United States. syedururi@mdanderson.org
Telephone: +1-713-7920336 Fax: +1-713-7944379
Received: January 25, 2016
Peer-review started: January 26, 2016
First decision: March 25, 2016
Revised: April 5, 2016
Accepted: April 14, 2016
Article in press: April 18, 2016
Published online: July 28, 2016
Abstract

AIM: To compare breath-hold cartesian volumetric interpolated breath-hold examination (cVIBE) and free-breathing radial VIBE (rVIBE) and determine whether rVIBE could replace cVIBE in routine liver magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

METHODS: In this prospective study, 15 consecutive patients scheduled for routine MRI of the abdomen underwent pre- and post-contrast breath-hold cVIBE imaging (19 s acquisition time) and free-breathing rVIBE imaging (111 s acquisition time) on a 1.5T Siemens scanner. Three radiologists with 2, 4, and 8 years post-fellowship experience in abdominal imaging evaluated all images. The radiologists were blinded to the sequence types, which were presented in a random order for each patient. For each sequence, the radiologists scored the cVIBE and rVIBE images for liver edge sharpness, hepatic vessel clarity, presence of artifacts, lesion conspicuity, fat saturation, and overall image quality using a five-point scale.

RESULTS: Compared to rVIBE, cVIBE yielded significantly (P < 0.001) higher scores for liver edge sharpness (mean score, 3.87 vs 3.37), hepatic-vessel clarity (3.71 vs 3.18), artifacts (3.74 vs 3.06), lesion conspicuity (3.81 vs 3.2), and overall image quality (3.91 vs 3.24). cVIBE and rVIBE did not significantly differ in quality of fat saturation (4.12 vs 4.03, P = 0.17). The inter-observer variability with respect to differences between rVIBE and cVIBE scores was close to zero compared to random error and inter-patient variation. Quality of rVIBE images was rated as acceptable for all parameters.

CONCLUSION: rVIBE cannot replace cVIBE in routine liver MRI. At 1.5T, free-breathing rVIBE yields acceptable, although slightly inferior image quality compared to breath-hold cVIBE.

Keywords: Liver magnetic resonance imaging, Radial imaging, Free-breathing magnetic resonance acquisition

Core tip: This is a prospective study comparing the image quality of the current standard of care T1 weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique for liver MRI, the breath-hold cartesian volumetric interpolated breath-hold examination (cVIBE), with a new free-breathing imaging technique, radial VIBE (rVIBE), at 1.5T. Image quality of rVIBE is acceptable but slightly inferior compared to cVIBE.