• Manojkumar Saranathan, Dan W Rettmann, Brian A Hargreaves, Jafi A Lipson, and Bruce L Daniel.
• Department of Radiology, Stanford, California, USA.
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2014 Dec 1; 40 (6): 1392-9.

PurposeTo investigate a new variable spatiotemporal resolution dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) MRI method termed DIfferential Subsampling with Cartesian Ordering (DISCO), for imaging of breast cancer.Materials And MethodsDISCO combines variable density, pseudorandom k-space segmentation and two-point Dixon fat-water separation for high spatiotemporal resolution breast DCE MRI. During the contrast wash-in phase, view sharing is used to achieve high temporal resolution. Forty patients referred for breast MRI were imaged, 26 using the proposed DISCO sequence and 14 using a conventional low-spatial-resolution dynamic sequence (VIBRANT-FLEX) on a 3 Tesla scanner. DISCO dynamic images from 14 patients were compared with VIBRANT-FLEX images from 14 other patients. The image quality assessed by radiologist image ranking in a blinded manner, and the temporal characteristics of the two sequences were compared.ResultsA spatial resolution of 1.1 × 1.1 × 1.2 mm(3) (160 slices, 28 cm field of view) was achieved with axial bilateral coverage in 120 s. Dynamic images with ∼ 9 s effective temporal resolution were generated during the 2-min contrast wash-in phase. The image quality of DISCO dynamic images ranked significantly higher than low spatial resolution VIBRANT-FLEX images (19.5 versus 9.5, Mann-Whitney U-test P = 0.00914), with no significant differences in the maximum slope of aortic enhancement.ConclusionDISCO is a promising variable-spatiotemporal-resolution imaging sequence for capturing the dynamics of rapidly enhancing tumors as well as structural features postcontrast. A near 1-mm isotropic spatial resolution was achieved with postcontrast static phase images in 120 s and dynamic phase images acquired in 9 s per phase.© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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