MR of focal liver lesions: Comparison of breath-hold and non-breath-hold hybrid RARE and conventional spin-echo T2-weighted pulse sequences

To compare liver lesion detection rates, tissue signal and noise data, and qualitative parameters for breath-hold (BH) and non-breath-hold (NBH) hybrid rapid acquisition with relaxation enhancement (RARE) and conventional spin-echo (CSE) T2-weighted (CSE-T2) MR sequences, 20 patients were imaged using all three sequences. Lesion detection rates were 73.5% for the CSE-T2 sequence and 81.1% and 88.6% for the BH-RARE and NBH-RARE sequences, respectively (P = .027). Mean lesion-to-liver signal-difference-to-noise ratio for the NBH-RARE sequence was 14.0 +/- 11.5, significantly greater than 9.8 +/- 7.8 obtained for the BH-RARE sequence (P = .050) and 9.0 +/- 6.2 obtained for the CSE-T2 sequence (P = 0.15). The NBH-RARE sequence demonstrated fewer artifacts and greater overall image quality compared to the CSE-T2 sequence. The NBH-RARE sequence is a useful alternative to the CSE-T2 sequence providing a higher mean lesion-to-liver signal-difference-to-noise ratio and lesion detection rate and better overall image quality.