Breath-hold black-blood T1rho mapping improves liver T1rho quantification in healthy volunteers. (March 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wáng, Yì Xiáng J; Deng, Min; Lo, Gladys G; Liang, Dong; Yuan, Jing; Chen, Weitian
• Is Part Of: Acta radiologica. Volume 59:Number 3(2018:Apr.)
• Page Start: 257
• Page End: 265
• Publication Date: 2018-03
• Subjects: T1rho -- liver -- breath-hold -- black blood -- age -- gender -- fast spin echo; Radiology, Medical -- Periodicals; Radiography, Medical -- Periodicals; Radiotherapy -- Periodicals; 616.0757
• DOI: 10.1177/0284185117717764
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0284-1851

Abstract

Background: Recent researches suggest that T1rho may be a non-invasive and quantitative technique for detecting and grading liver fibrosis. Purpose: To compare a multi-breath-hold bright-blood fast gradient echo (GRE) imaging and a single breath-hold single-shot fast spin echo (FSE) imaging with black-blood effect for liver parenchyma T1rho measurement and to study liver physiological T1rho value in healthy volunteers. Material and Methods: The institutional Ethics Committee approved this study. 28 healthy participants (18 men, 10 women; age = 29.6 ± 5.1 years) underwent GRE liver T1rho imaging, and 20 healthy participants (10 men, 10 women; age = 36.9 ± 10.3 years) underwent novel black-blood FSE liver T1rho imaging, both at 3T with spin-lock frequency of 500 Hz. The FSE technique allows simultaneous acquisition of four spin lock times (TSLs; 1 ms, 10 ms, 30 ms, 50msec) in 10 s. Results: For FSE technique the intra-scan repeatability intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0.98; while the inter-scan reproducibility ICC was 0.82 which is better than GRE technique's 0.76. Liver T1rho value in women tended to have a higher value than T1rho values in men (FSE: 42.28 ± 4.06 ms for women and 39.13 ± 2.12 ms for men; GRE: 44.44 ± 1.62 ms for women and 42.36 ± 2.00 ms for men) and FSE technique showed liver T1rho value decreased slightly as age increased. Conclusion: Single breath-hold black-blood FSE sequence has better scan–rescan reproducibility than multi-breath-hold bright-blood GRE sequence. Gender and age dependence of liver T1rho in healthy participants is observed, with young women tending to have a higher T1rho measurement.