Zhang Zhongwei, Song Laijing, Meng Quanfei, Li Ziping, Luo Boning, Pei Zhong, Zeng Jinsheng
Department of Radiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
J Magn Reson Imaging. 2008 Aug;28(2):440-4. doi: 10.1002/jmri.21304.
To evaluate the image quality of segmented echo planar MRI with inversion recovery magnetization preparation (seg-IR-EPI) to depict the anatomy and pathologic changes involving the brachial plexus.
The coronal seg-IR-EPI sequence was performed on 30 healthy volunteers and 20 patients. Postprocessing techniques were used to generate images of brachial plexus and the images acquired were qualitatively evaluated by two experienced radiologists based on grading of the morphological images. Signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and nerve soft tissue contrast-to-noise-ratios (CNRs) were calculated and the normalized SNR (SNRn) and the normalized CNR (CNRn) were compared with the STIR TSE sequence.
Although seg-IR-EPI had more ghosting artifacts than STIR TSE, excellent general image appearance with minor blurring can be achieved with seg-IR-EPI. In all healthy volunteers the means of CNRn were significantly greater for seg-IR-EPI than for STIR-TSE, while the means of SNRn were significantly lower for seg-IR-EPI than for STIR-TSE.
In the present study the seg-IR-EPI sequence obtained uniform fat suppression and high-contrast T2-weighted images of brachial plexus. Our data suggest that the seg-IR-EPI sequence may provide high fidelity in evaluating brachial plexus.
评估采用反转恢复磁化准备的分段回波平面磁共振成像（seg-IR-EPI）描绘臂丛神经的解剖结构和病理变化的图像质量。
对30名健康志愿者和20名患者进行冠状位seg-IR-EPI序列检查。采用后处理技术生成臂丛神经图像，并由两名经验丰富的放射科医生根据形态学图像分级对采集的图像进行定性评估。计算信噪比（SNR）和神经软组织对比噪声比（CNR），并将归一化信噪比（SNRn）和归一化对比噪声比（CNRn）与短TI反转恢复快速自旋回波（STIR TSE）序列进行比较。
尽管seg-IR-EPI比STIR TSE有更多的鬼影伪影，但seg-IR-EPI仍能获得总体图像外观良好且模糊度较小的图像。在所有健康志愿者中，seg-IR-EPI的CNRn均值显著高于STIR-TSE，而seg-IR-EPI的SNRn均值显著低于STIR-TSE。
在本研究中，seg-IR-EPI序列获得了均匀脂肪抑制和高对比度的臂丛神经T2加权图像。我们的数据表明，seg-IR-EPI序列在评估臂丛神经方面可能具有高保真度。
