Surrogate arterial phase imaging using a long duration (≈1.5 min) radial acquisition T1-weighted sequence: an alternative in patients unable to breath-hold

Abstract

Background

Pediatric and adult patients unable to suspend respiration generally undergo magnetic resonance (MR) examinations that lack arterial phase imaging, which is a phase that provides substantial information on disease processes. An MR strategy that provides this type of information may be of considerable value.

Purpose

To describe and assess the feasibility and enhancement quality of early-phase imaging utilizing long-duration radial 3D-GRE imaging by initiating the sequence prior to starting contrast injection.

Material and Methods

Thirty-three consecutive patients (10 men, 23 women; 50.7 ± 25.5 years) underwent free-breathing gadolinium-enhanced radial 3D-GRE, with sequence initiation 30 s prior to contrast injection. Late hepatic arterial (LHA) phase was chosen for comparison. Images were evaluated for enhancement and overall image quality. Organ enhancement was calculated. Sub-group analysis was performed.

Results

Twenty-two examinations of radial 3D-GRE sequences were acquired during the LHA phase. Organ enhancement scores were of satisfactory to good quality (range, 3.32–3.82). There was a significant trend of superior overall enhancement quality scores in pediatrics and examinations performed at 3 T (P = 0.0225 and 0.0001, respectively).

Conclusion

Arterial phase abdominal MR imaging is feasible using conventional radial 3D-GRE by adopting this simplistic proposed approach, which may allow arterial-phase imaging in patients unable to breath-hold.

Keywords

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)abdomen uncooperative patients arterial imaging free-breathing radial 3D-GRE

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Kim

. Enhancement of liver and pancreas on late hepatic arterial phase Imaging: Quantitative comparison among multiple gadolinium-based contrast agents at 1.5 tesla MRI. J Magn Reson Imaging 2013; 38: 102–108.

Lee

Lavelle

Rofsky

. Hepatic MR imaging with a dynamic contrast-enhanced isotropic volumetric interpolated breath-hold examination: feasibility, reproducibility, and technical quality. Radiology 2000; 215: 365–372.

Krinsky

Lee

Theise

. Hepatocellular carcinoma and dysplastic nodules in patients with cirrhosis: prospective diagnosis with MR imaging and explantation correlation. Radiology 2001; 219: 445–454.

Noterdaeme

Gleeson

Phillips

. Quantification of missing and overlapping data in multiple breath hold abdominal imaging. Eur J Radiol 2007; 64: 273–278.

Azevedo

de Campos

ROP

Ramalho

. Free-breathing 3D T1-weighted gradient-echo sequence with radial data sampling in abdominal MRI: preliminary observations. Am J Roentgenol 2011; 197: 650–657.

Kim

Lee

Jeon

. Free-breathing dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI of the abdomen and chest using a radial gradient echo sequence with K-space weighted image contrast (KWIC). Eur Radiol 2013; 23: 1352–1360.

Chandarana

Block

Rosenkrantz

. Free-breathing radial 3D fat-suppressed T1-weighted gradient echo sequence: a viable alternative for contrast-enhanced liver imaging in patients unable to suspend respiration. Invest Radiol 2011; 46: 648–653.

Bamrungchart

Tantaway

Midia

. Free breathing three-dimensional gradient echo-sequence with radial data sampling (radial 3D-GRE) examination of the pancreas: Comparison with standard 3D-GRE volumetric interpolated breathhold examination (VIBE). J Magn Reson Imaging 2013; 38: 1572–1577.

Balci

Semelka

. Contrast agents for MR imaging of the liver. Radiol Clin North Am 2005; 43: 887–98–viii.

10.

Goncalves Neto

Altun

Vaidean

. Early contrast enhancement of the liver: exact description of subphases using MRI. Magn Reson Imaging 2009; 27: 792–800.

11.

Goncalves Neto

Altun

Elazzazi

. Enhancement of abdominal organs on hepatic arterial phase: quantitative comparison between 1.5- and 3.0-T magnetic resonance imaging. Magn Reson Imaging 2010; 28: 47–55.

12.

Chandarana

Feng

Block

. Free-breathing contrast-enhanced multiphase MRI of the liver using a combination of compressed sensing, parallel imaging, and golden-angle radial sampling. Invest Radiol 2013; 48: 10–16.

13.

Feng

Grimm

Block

. Golden-angle radial sparse parallel MRI: combination of compressed sensing, parallel imaging, and golden-angle radial sampling for fast and flexible dynamic volumetric MRI. Magn Reson Med 2014; 72: 707–717.

14.

Hansen

Sorensen

Arai

. Retrospective reconstruction of high temporal resolution cine images from real-time MRI using iterative motion correction. Magn Reson Med 2012; 68: 741–750.

15.

Buerger

Prieto

Schaeffter

. Highly efficient 3D motion-compensated abdomen MRI from undersampled golden-RPE acquisitions. MAGMA 2013; 26: 419–429.

16.

Lin

Bornert

Huang

. Generalized GRAPPA operators for wider spiral bands: rapid self-calibrated parallel reconstruction for variable density spiral MRI. Magn Reson Med 2011; 66: 1067–1078.

17.

Kanematsu

Semelka

Matsuo

. Gadolinium-enhanced MR imaging of the liver: optimizing imaging delay for hepatic arterial and portal venous phases–a prospective randomized study in patients with chronic liver damage. Radiology 2002; 225: 407–415.

18.

Goshima

Kanematsu

Kondo

. Evaluation of optimal scan delay for gadoxetate disodium-enhanced hepatic arterial phase MRI using MR fluoroscopic triggering and slow injection technique. Am J Roentgenol 2013; 201: 578–582.

19.

Francis

Cohan

McNulty

. Multidetector CT of the liver and hepatic neoplasms: effect of multiphasic imaging on tumor conspicuity and vascular enhancement. Am J Roentgenol 2003; 180: 1217–1224.

20.

Block

Uecker

Frahm

. Undersampled radial MRI with multiple coils. Iterative image reconstruction using a total variation constraint. Magn Reson Med 2007; 57: 1086–1098.

21.

R Core Team. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing, 3rd ed. Vienna: R Foundation, 2014.

22.

Landis

Koch

. The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. Biometrics 1977; 33: 159–174.

23.

Rohrer

Bauer

Mintorovitch

. Comparison of magnetic properties of MRI contrast media solutions at different magnetic field strengths. Invest Radiol 2005; 40: 715–724.

24.

Pintaske

Martirosian

Graf

. Relaxivity of Gadopentetate Dimeglumine (Magnevist), Gadobutrol (Gadovist), and Gadobenate Dimeglumine (MultiHance) in human blood plasma at 0.2, 1.5, and 3 Tesla. Invest Radiol 2006; 41: 213–221.

25.

Shin

AlObaidy

Ramalho

. Inter- and intra-individual comparative study of two gadolinium-based agents: A pilot study. Abdom Imaging 2015; 40: 865–874.

26.

Kim

. Enhancement of the liver and pancreas in the hepatic arterial dominant phase: Comparison of hepatocyte-specific MRI contrast agents, gadoxetic acid and gadobenate dimeglumine, on 3 and 1.5 tesla MRI in the same patient. J Magn Reson Imaging 2012; 37: 903–908.

27.

Neimatallah

Dong

. Gadolinium-enhanced 3D magnetic resonance angiography of the thoracic vessels. J Magn Reson Imaging 1999; 10: 758–770.

28.

Block KT, Geppert C, Block TK, et al. Bringing compressed sensing to clinical reality: prototypic setup for evaluation in routine applications. Available at: http://www5.informatik.uni-erlangen.de/Forschung/Publikationen/2013/Block13-BCS.pdf.