Optimization of prostatic magnetic resonance imaging technique.

With a 1.5-T magnetic resonance imager the authors systematically varied a large number of technical factors to obtain an optimum balance between high image quality and reasonable imaging time for the prostate gland. Each parameter was adjusted relative to benchmark images of very high quality to achieve a reasonable acquisition time with as little loss of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as possible. Image quality was judged subjectively by magnetic resonance radiologists and objectively by measurements of SNR for the prostate. The authors recommend multislice, multiecho spin-echo pulse sequences with dual surface coils, fat suppression, reduced bandwidth, a repetition time of 1500 ms, echo times of 30 and 60 ms, a flip angle of 60 degrees, two excitations, a slice thickness of 5 mm with a 1.5-mm gap and 192 phase-encoding steps. The acquisition time for one such series was 9.6 minutes.