ABSTRACT
Magnetic resonance neurography (MRN) has been used to evaluate abnormal conditions of entire nerves and nerve bundles. A fat-suppressed 3D turbo spin echo (TSE) sequence is one of the imaging techniques for MRN, which has been widely adopted at 1.5 T. However, MRN of the brachial plexus using a 3D TSE sequence with short-term inversion recovery (STIR) reduces the effect of fat suppression at 3.0 T. Moreover, the use of spectral pre-saturation with inversion recovery (SPIR) does not result in uniform fat suppression due to the inhomogeneity of the static magnetic field. On the other hand, it is well known that the visibility of the brachial plexus using a 3D TSE sequence greatly changes with the equivalent echo time (TEequiv). Therefore, we optimized the fat suppression technique and TEequiv so that the 3D TSE sequence, using a combination of STIR with SPIR and an optimal TEequiv (from 73 to 110 ms), achieved better visualization of the brachial plexus without residual fat.
Subject(s)
Brachial Plexus , Imaging, Three-Dimensional , Brachial Plexus/diagnostic imaging , Humans , Magnetic Resonance ImagingABSTRACT
Various three-dimensional fast spin echo (3D-FSE) sequences are used for non-contrast magnetic resonance angiography (MRA). Differences in the ability to detect vascular stenosis using these sequences, however, have not yet been evaluated. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the usefulness of each sequence for the detection of vascular stenosis by using a vascular phantom. The phantom consisting of silicon tubes with 30% and 70% stenosis of luminal diameter and fluids close to T