• J Fagundes, M G Longo, S Y Huang, B R Rosen, T Witzel, K Heberlein, R G Gonzalez, P Schaefer, and O Rapalino.
• From the Clínica de Diagnóstico por Imagem (J.F.), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
• AJNR Am J Neuroradiol. 2017 Sep 1; 38 (9): 1689-1694.

Background And PurposeThe development of new MR imaging scanners with stronger gradients and improvement in coil technology, allied with emerging fast imaging techniques, has allowed a substantial reduction in MR imaging scan times. Our goal was to develop a 10-minute gadolinium-enhanced brain MR imaging protocol with accelerated sequences and to evaluate its diagnostic performance compared with the standard clinical protocol.Materials And MethodsFifty-three patients referred for brain MR imaging with contrast were scanned with a 3T scanner. Each MR image consisted of 5 basic fast precontrast sequences plus standard and accelerated versions of the same postcontrast T1WI sequences. Two neuroradiologists assessed the image quality and the final diagnosis for each set of postcontrast sequences and compared their performances.ResultsThe acquisition time of the combined accelerated pre- and postcontrast sequences was 10 minutes and 15 seconds; and of the fast postcontrast sequences, 3 minutes and 36 seconds, 46% of the standard sequences. The 10-minute postcontrast axial T1WI had fewer image artifacts (P < .001) and better overall diagnostic quality (P < .001). Although the 10-minute MPRAGE sequence showed a tendency to have more artifacts than the standard sequence (P = .08), the overall diagnostic quality was similar (P = .66). Moreover, there was no statistically significant difference in the diagnostic performance between the protocols. The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy values for the 10-minute protocol were 100.0%, 88.9%, and 98.1%.ConclusionsThe 10-minute brain MR imaging protocol with contrast is comparable in diagnostic performance with the standard protocol in an inpatient motion-prone population, with the additional benefits of reducing acquisition times and image artifacts.© 2017 by American Journal of Neuroradiology.

23 keywords...

hide…