Xinzeng Wang1, Crystal E. Harrison1, Yogesh K. Mariappan2, Karthik Gopalakrishnan2, Avneesh Chhabra1,3, Robert E. Lenkinski1,3, and Ananth J. Madhuranthakam1,3
1Radiology, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States, 2Philips Innovation Campus, Philips Healthcare, Bangalore, India, 3Advanced Imaging Research Center, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States
Volumetric Brachial Plexus
imaging at 3T often suffers from incomplete fat suppression and reduced SNR with
standard STIR and SPAIR due to increased B1 and B0 inhomogeneities. Dual-echo
Dixon TSE has been shown to achieve uniform fat suppression without increasing
total scan time or SNR penalty by acquiring two echoes in the same repetition.
In this work, we compared 3D dual-echo Dixon TSE against current standard of
care 3D STIR and 3D SPAIR for brachial plexus imaging with respect to fat
suppression, blood suppression, nerve visualization and SNR at 3T. Overall, the
3D dual-echo Dixon TSE showed significantly improved performance.
