Maruyama Hirotoshi, Fujiwara Yasuhiro, Sakemoto Tsukasa
Department of Radiology, National Hospital Organization Kumamoto Saisyunso Hospital.
Department of Medical Imaging, Faculty of Life Sciences, Kumamoto University.
Nihon Hoshasen Gijutsu Gakkai Zasshi. 2019;75(2):143-150. doi: 10.6009/jjrt.2019_JSRT_75.2.143.
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 (TE). Therefore, we optimized the fat suppression technique and TE so that the 3D TSE sequence, using a combination of STIR with SPIR and an optimal TE (from 73 to 110 ms), achieved better visualization of the brachial plexus without residual fat.
磁共振神经成像（MRN）已被用于评估整条神经和神经束的异常情况。脂肪抑制三维快速自旋回波（TSE）序列是MRN的成像技术之一，在1.5T时已被广泛采用。然而，在3.0T时，使用具有短反转恢复（STIR）的三维TSE序列进行臂丛神经的MRN会降低脂肪抑制效果。此外，由于静磁场的不均匀性，使用频谱预饱和反转恢复（SPIR）并不能实现均匀的脂肪抑制。另一方面，众所周知，使用三维TSE序列时臂丛神经的可视性会随等效回波时间（TE）发生很大变化。因此，我们优化了脂肪抑制技术和TE，使得结合STIR与SPIR以及最佳TE（73至110毫秒）的三维TSE序列能够在无残留脂肪的情况下更好地显示臂丛神经。
