Metastases in fatty liver: appearance on conventional spin-echo, fast-spin-echo, and echo-planar T2-weighted MR images.

A 71-year-old woman with liver metastases from colon adenocarcinoma in a severe fatty liver underwent T2-weighted MR imaging with conventional spin-echo (CSE), breath-hold fast-SE (BH-fast-SE), respiratory-triggered fast-SE (RT-fast-SE), and multishot SE echo-planar (SE-EP) techniques. CSE and SE-EP T2-weighted images showed the metastases as areas of high signal intensity. In contrast, RT-fast-SE and BH-fast-SE images showed them as areas of low signal intensity. Metastatic tumors in severe fatty liver can be shown as low signal-intensity areas with T2-weighted MR imaging using fast-SE sequences without use of the fat-suppression technique.