ECHO-PLANAR IMAGING OF THE LIVER WITH A STANDARD MR-IMAGING SYSTEM

PURPOSE: A multisection, whole-body echo-planar imaging (EPI) sequence was developed to obtain T2-weighted images of the liver in one 18-second breath hold with a standard magnetic resonance (MR) imaging system. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This capability was achieved by dividing the data acquisition period into eight interleaved segments rather than one or two as implemented previously with EPI systems having high-power gradient subsystems. RESULTS: The interleaved echo-planar images had excellent depiction of anatomy and no identifiable respiratory artifact. In 26 lesions in 12 patients, the eight-shot echo-planar images (2,000/66 [repetition time msec/echo time msec]) had superior contrast compared with conventional T2-weighted spin-echo (SE) images (2,500/60) by an average factor of 1.22 +/- 0.31 (standard deviation) and an average contrast-to-noise ratio relative to conventional T2-weighted SE images of 0.85 +/- 0.22. CONCLUSION: With a conventional MR imaging system, breath-hold T2-weighted echo-planar images of the liver are comparable in diagnostic quality to conventional SE images.