• Seung Soo Lee, Jae Ho Byun, Hye-Suk Hong, Seong Ho Park, Hyung Jin Won, Yong Moon Shin, and Moon-Gyu Lee.
• Department of Radiology and Research Institute of Radiology, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea.
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2007 Aug 1; 26 (2): 323-30.

PurposeTo evaluate image quality and accuracy for the detection of focal hepatic lesions depicted on T2-weighted images obtained with two high-resolution free-breathing techniques (navigator-triggered turbo spin-echo [TSE] and respiratory-triggered TSE) and two standard-resolution breath-hold techniques (breath-hold TSE with restore pulse and half-Fourier acquisition single-shot TSE [HASTE]).Materials And MethodsOur institutional review board approved this study, and written informed consent was obtained from all patients. Two readers independently reviewed 200 T2-weighted imaging sets obtained with four sequences in 50 patients. Both readers identified all focal lesions in session 1 and only solid lesions in session 2. The readers' confidence was graded using a scale of 1-4 (1 or= 95%). The diagnostic accuracies of the four MR sequences were evaluated using the free-response receiver operating characteristic (ROC) method. Region-of-interest (ROI) measurements were performed for the mean signal intensity (SI) in the liver, spleen, hepatic lesions, and background noise.ResultsThe accuracy of navigator-triggered TSE and respiratory-triggered TSE was superior to that of breath-hold TSE with restore pulse and HASTE for the detection of all focal or solid hepatic lesions. The mean lesion-to-liver contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of solid lesions in navigator-triggered (P < 0.001) and respiratory-triggered TSE (P < 0.005) was significantly higher than that in HASTE.ConclusionHigh-resolution, free-breathing, T2-weighted MRI techniques can significantly improve the detectability of focal hepatic lesions and provide higher lesion-to-liver contrast of solid lesions compared to breath-hold techniques.(c) 2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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