Comparisons of turbo spin-echo and echo-planar diffusion-weighted imaging of the female pelvic region on 1.5T and 3.0T magnetic resonance systems.

Abstract

Background: There have been no previous studies comparing the effectiveness of echo-planar imaging (EPI)-diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and turbo spin echo (TSE)-DWI for female pelvic imaging on 1.5T and 3.0T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems.

Purpose: This retrospective study compared EPI-DWI and TSE-DWI of the female pelvis at 1.5T and 3.0T MRI to evaluate image quality, geometric distortion, and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values for optimal clinical diagnosis.

Materials and methods: Thirty-nine patients at 1.5T and 71 patients at 3.0T underwent both TSE- and EPI-DWI with b-values of 0 and 1000 s/mm². Spatial resolution was matched between systems and sequences. Geometric distortion, contrast ((uterine myometrium signal intensity (SI) - gluteal muscle SI)/(uterine myometrium SI + gluteal muscles SI)), and ADC values of the uterine myometrium and lesions were compared. Qualitative assessment included ghosting artifacts, image contrast, and overall image quality.

Results: There was no significant difference in patient demographics between 1.5T and 3.0T groups. TSE-DWI demonstrated significantly less distortion than EPI-DWI at both field strengths (p < .05). Contrast was higher with TSE-DWI than EPI-DWI at 3.0T (p < .05) and was greater at 3.0T than 1.5T. ADC values of malignancies differed significantly from the uterus and benign lesions across all sequences and field strengths (p < .05). TSE-DWI showed higher ghosting artifact scores than EPI-DWI at 3.0T (p = .019), but no other significant differences in qualitative evaluation were noted.

Conclusion: TSE-DWI provided superior contrast with reduced distortion compared to EPI-DWI in the female pelvis at both field strengths, with TSE-DWI demonstrating greater effectiveness at 3.0T.