ABDOMINAL MR-IMAGING - EVALUATION OF A FAST SPIN-ECHO SEQUENCE

PURPOSE: To compare contrast of abdominal tissue on magnetic resonance (MR) images obtained with T2-weighted conventional spin-echo (SE) and fast spin-echo (FSE) sequences. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Forty-eight patients (26 men and 22 women, aged 24-77 years) with known or suspected liver disease underwent FSE and SE MR imaging at 1.5 T. Signal intensity (SI) and ratios of signal-to-noise (S/N), signal difference-to-noise (SD/N), and SI were calculated for the spleen, pancreas, kidney, muscle, fat, and malignant liver lesions compared with liver. RESULTS: Significant differences were found between SD/N on FSE and SE images of all tissues, with FSE images providing lower SD/N for all tissues except fat. Malignant liver lesions (n = 69) showed lower SI ratios on the FSE compared with the SE images. Differences in mean SI ratios between malignant liver lesions and hemangiomas or cysts (n = 41) were significant on the FSE images (P = .01) but not on the SE images (P = .27). CONCLUSION: Compared with conventional T2-weighted SE images, small but significant differences in tissue-to-liver contrast were obtained for some tissues, including malignant liver lesions, on FSE images.