Clinical application of turbo gradient and spin echo-BLADE diffusion weighted imaging at the sellar region / 中华放射学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To compare the image quality of turbo gradient and spin echo-BLADE diffusion weighted imaging (TGSE-BLADE-DWI) with that of readout segmentation of long variable echo-trains (RESOLVE) at the sellar region.Methods:From September 15 th, 2019 to February 15 th, 2020, 38 patients with suspected sellar abnormalities were enrolled prospectively to perform RESOLVE and TGSE-BLADE-DWI at a 3.0 T MR scanner in Department of Radiology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. Totally, 32 patients were identified with sellar lesions. The DWI images were evaluated subjectively and objectively. Two experienced radiologists scored images of the two DWI methods for anatomical structures (including the internal carotid arteries, optic chiasm, pituitary stalk and pituitary gland), lesion conspicuity, susceptibility artifacts, geometric distortions and overall image quality using a five-point scale respectively. Objective parameters on the images of the two DWI methods were analyzed, including lesion size, signal to noise ratio (SNR) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC). The consistency of subjective scores of two radiologists was tested by Kappa test. Paired t-test, Wilcoxon signed rank test, Kappa statistics were used for statistical evaluation. Results:TGSE-BLADE-DWI performed significantly better than RESOLVE in depicting the sellar anatomical structures, lesion conspicuity, geometric distortion and overall image quality (all P<0.05). There were no significant differences in SNR, maximum longitudinal diameter of lesions and ADC of lesions between the two DWI methods(all P>0.05). The maximum transverse diameter measured by TGSE-BLADE-DWI was significantly smaller than that of RESOLVE ( Z=3.31, P=0.001). Conclusions:Compared with RESOLVE, TGSE-BLADE-DWI is superior in depicting the anatomical structures, decreasing susceptibility artifacts and geometric distortions at the sellar region and effectively improves the image quality of DWI, which has great value in clinical applications.