Abstract
Purpose
To establish if triple-phase arterial imaging improves the detection of arterial phase hyperintense lesions based on arterial phase capture, motion artifact degradation, and lesion enhancement when compared to single-phase imaging.
Materials and methods
Patients at risk for hepatocellular carcinoma were imaged at 3.0T. Seventy-three consecutive patients with a standard single-phase MRI and eighty-five consecutive patients were imaged using extracellular contrast with triple arterial phase MRI using three sequential accelerated acquisitions of 8 s. Arterial phase capture and image quality were qualitatively categorized. Forty single-phase and forty-four triple-phase studies contained arterially enhancing lesions > 1 cm with washout appearance. The contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of the lesions was calculated. We compared the differences in means with Student t-tests and those in arterial phase capture with a Chi squared test with Yates correction.
Results
The triple-phase acquisitions captured the early or late arterial phases more frequently than did the single-phase acquisition (99% vs 86%; P value = 0.006). Triple-phase also provided greater number of patients with early or late arterial phase imaging without motion artifact (92% vs 79%, P-value = 0.05). The lesion analysis revealed increased maximum CNR in the triple-phase imaging (704.4) vs. single-phase imaging (517.2), P-value < 0.001.
Conclusion
Triple-phase acquisition provides more robust arterial phase imaging for hepatic lesions, with increased lesion CNR, compared to standard single-phase arterial phase imaging.
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Nabia S. Ikram, Judy Yee, Stefanie Weinstein, Benjamin M. Yeh, Carlos U. Corvera, Alexander Monto and Thomas A. Hope declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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The need for individual informed consent was waived by our institutional review board (IRB) for this retrospective study.
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Ikram, N.S., Yee, J., Weinstein, S. et al. Multiple arterial phase MRI of arterial hypervascular hepatic lesions: improved arterial phase capture and lesion enhancement. Abdom Radiol 42, 870–876 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00261-016-0948-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00261-016-0948-8