Thin-slice free-breathing pseudo-golden-angle radial stack-of-stars with gating and tracking T 1 -weighted acquisition: An efficient gadoxetic acid-enhanced hepatobiliary-phase imaging alternative for patients with unstable breath holding

Abstract

Purpose: To compare four free-breathing scan techniques for gadoxetic acid-enhanced hepatobiliary phase imaging with conventional breath-hold scans. Materials and Methods: Gadoxetic acid-enhanced hepatobiliary phase imaging with six image acquisition sets performed in 50 patients. Image acquisition sets included fat-suppressed 3D T 1 -weighted turbo field echo with free-breathing pseudo-golden-angle radial stack-of-stars (FBRS) acquisition, FBRS with track (FBRS T ), FBRS with gate and track (FBRS G&T ), thin-slice FBRS with gate and track (thin-slice FBRS G&T ), free-breathing Cartesian acquisition (Cartesian FB ), and breath-hold Cartesian acquisition (Cartesian BH ). Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR), and image quality compared to the six-image acquisition sets. Results: Signal-to-noise ratio and CNR were significantly higher in FBRS, FBRS T , FBRS G&T , and thin-slice FBRS G&T than in Cartesian FB and Cartesian BH (P < 0.001). Based on sharpness, motion artifacts, visibility of intrahepatic vessels, and overall image quality, thin-slice FBRS G&T had the highest image quality followed by Cartesian BH and FBRS G&T (P < 0.001). Severe motion artifacts were observed in 25 patients in Cartesian FB and three patients in Cartesian BH , whereas image quality remained above the acceptable range in FBRS G&T , FBRS T , FBRS, and thin-slice FBRS G&T in all cases. Conclusion: Thin-slice FBRS G&T demonstrated excellent image quality compared with conventional Cartesian BH in gadoxetic acid-enhanced hepatobiliary phase imaging. It can be apply to supplemental sequences of patients with unstable breath holding.