Abstract
We evaluated the degree of inhomogeneities of fat suppression using the fully automated three-dimensional breast shimming technique (Image Based-Smart: IB-Smart) and manual setting of a rectangular parallelepiped shim (volume shimming) in MR mammography. Information on breast shape was collected from 9 patients whose images were insufficiently fat-suppressed. A breast phantom made of a thermoplastic sheet was used. Shimming of the magnetic field was done with IB-Smart and various dimensions of volume shims: the anterior to posterior/right to left/head to foot directions were set to 75–150/150–350/50–150 mm. The volumes of inhomogeneously suppressed fat were measured. The calculated volume with inhomogeneous fat suppression with use of IB-Smart was 13.3 × 104 mm3. The smallest volume of inhomogeneous fat suppression with volume shimming was 5.4 × 104 mm3 when the anterior–posterior/right–left/head–foot directions were set to 75/350/50 mm. Our results show that using optimized dimensions of volume shims enables better fat suppression than does IB-Smart.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Yoshinori Hirose and Tsuneyuki Tomita from the radiotherapy division of the department of radiology at the Osaka Red Cross Hospital for the construction of the phantom.
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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
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Takatsu, Y., Nishiyama, K., Miyati, T. et al. A comparison of shimming techniques for optimizing fat suppression in MR mammography. Radiol Phys Technol 6, 486–491 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12194-013-0224-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12194-013-0224-3