Behroze Adi Vachha1, Subhendra Sarkar1, Robert Greenman1, David Hackney1
1Radiology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
We compared the effectiveness of Iterative Decomposition with Echo Asymmetric and Least-Squares Estimation (IDEAL) fat-selective images to conventional T1-weighted spin-echo (SE) images for depiction of vertebral body lesions with reduced or increased fat content. We computed signal intensity ratios of lesions to adjacent vertebrae with both sequences. IDEAL showed significantly higher contrast between vertebral lesions and adjacent vertebral bodies than T1 SE images, ratios were 0.58 (T1 weighted), and 0.25 (IDEAL fat-selective) for reduced fat lesions and 1.47 (T1 weighted) and 1.83 (IDEAL fat-selective) for increased fat lesions; p<0.05 for both lesion types. IDEAL also displays significantly higher fat/water contrast, p<0.001.