甲状腺专用表面线圈在甲状腺MRI中的图像质量研究

目的 探讨8通道特制甲状腺专用表面线圈对甲状腺磁共振检查图像质量的影响.材料与方法 对49名健康志愿者使用8通道甲状腺专用表面线圈行甲状腺磁共振检查,扫描序列包括T1WI、T2WI、T2WI-FS(fat-suturation)、扩散加权成像(diffusion weighted imaging,DWI)-STIR和D...

Application of a dedicated surface coil in thyroid MRI provides superior image quality

Objective:To evaluate the quality of thyroid gland magnetic resonance images acquired using a surface coil exclusively designed for thyroid gland.Materials and Methods:In this prospective study,forty-nine volunteers underwent MR examination using the surface coil exclusively designed for thyroid gland under a thyroid MR protocol including T1WI,T2WI,T2WI-FS(fat-suturation),DWI-STIR(diffusion weighted imaging-STIR)and DWI-FOCUS.For the qualitative evaluation,double-blinded evaluation was performed by two experienced radiologists on the image quality according to the Likert Scale scoring criteria,and then the consistency of the scoring results was analyzed.As for quantitative evaluation,the consistency in signal intensity,signal-to-noise ratio(SNR)and contrast-to-noise ratio(CNR)measured between each lobe of the thyroid gland on the MR images with different sequences was analyzed.Results:Based on the subjective scoring criteria,all of the T1WI,T2WI,T2WI-FS images were rated no less than 4 points,while all of DWI-STIR and DWI-FOCUS images were rated no less than 3 points by two radiologists.Two radiologists agreed perfectly in the ratings of T1WI,T2WI,T2WI-FS,DWI-STIR and DWI-FOCUS sequences with consistency of 0.92,0.94,0.96,0.93 and 0.89,respectively.For the objective evaluation in consistencies between two lobes of thyroid gland for the T1WI,T2WI,T2WI-FS,DWI-STIR and DWI-FOCUS sequences,consistency of 0.957,0.937,0.924,0.871 and 0.848 for the mean signal intensities,0.945,0.957,0.885,0.825 and 0.773 for the signal-to-noise ratio,0.577,0.704,0.740,0.710 and 0.589 for the contrast-to-noise ration were obtained with mean signal intensities of 1246.39,1345.03,860.88,236.91 and 569.06,SNRs of 17.56,33.18,42.82,27.99 and 19.53,CNRs of 0.20,5.36,3.07,16.01 and 9.91,respectively for each sequence.Conclusions:The thyroid MR images acquired using the exclusively designed surface coil have high subjective rating scores,homogeneous signal intensity,high consistency in signal intensity,signal-to-noise ratios and contrast-to-noise ratio,which suggests that they could meet the requirement for clinical diagnosis.