Published online Jul 28, 2016. doi: 10.4329/wjr.v8.i7.707
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
Processing time: 181 Days and 2.6 Hours
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.
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.